Veterinary medicine: the profession that heals humanity

In one joke, a woman shows up at the vet's office with a poodle. And the vet takes the dog and does a series of tests. When he finishes, he goes and says: “That's it, his dog is very good.” The poodle's owner, happy with the result, asks how much she owes, to which the veterinarian answers 120 euros. After paying them, the lady asks the vet: “And when do I have to come back?” To which the vet responds: “When you have another 120 euros.”

With this very bad joke, the current vision of veterinary work is somewhat summarized. But nothing could be further from the truth, because not just anyone will do to dedicate themselves to practicing veterinary medicine. First of all, veterinary medicine is a direct way to complete the scientific procedure; Then there is the other thing, the difficulty when using animals and that is what the testimonial book by the English veterinarian James Herriot is about, a fun work titled All creatures great and small (Blackie) where he narrates his adventures and misadventures in the English countryside.

It all begins in 1937 when, having just finished his veterinary studies, Herriot gets a job as an assistant to Siegfried Farnon of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, stationed in Yorkshire, a county of heather-covered hills in which the stone farms appear robust to the eye. the view and full of animals. It was almost a hundred years ago, an ancient time where, apart from using healing ointments and the various tools of the trade such as syringes, grasping forceps and surgical tweezers, veterinary work was carried out, above all, manually.

An example was the case of a cow with uterine eversion, a complication that arises after calving, when the uterus hangs outside. It is complex, especially because the cow is never in labor and it is very difficult to reposition the uterus. They are hours of continuous work. Although with epidural anesthesia a good part of the body is numbed and the cow lets itself be done, every time it is necessary to anesthetize the same problem arises: the cow has to sit up so that the veterinarian can find the epidural space. Then, once the anesthesia is administered, you have to clean the uterus and return it to its place with your hands, sliding it through the vagina; a slippery duct that in cows reaches 30 cm long.

It should be noted that the difficulties that Herriot faced at the end of the 1930s were the same as today; Little or nothing has changed in the work of a rural veterinarian. It is a hard job that requires vocation and a great sense of humor to know how to handle it. The conditions in which they work are complicated and, perhaps for this reason, there is an increasing shortage of personnel in rural areas. Nowadays, the veterinary profession is developed mainly in urban clinics, and it is no joke that with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases in animals we are taking care of our health.

Because a good part of our diseases are zoonoses, that is, infections transmitted by the animals themselves, either by direct contagion or by insects. It is amazing to see how the veterinary profession is one of the pillars of our health and how little this is questioned. Therefore, books like Herriot's are a touch to our critical conscience.

The stone ax It is a section where Montero Glezwith a desire for prose, exercises its particular siege on scientific reality to demonstrate that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.

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