Posts

Cataloguing the Correspondence of Henry Gray

As the RCVS Knowledge Archives and Digitisation assistant, my main duties are to scan the historical material, upload it to our Digital Collections website and take part in the promotion of the collection. In recent months, I have worked on a side project: cataloguing the personal correspondence and research papers of veterinary surgeon Henry Gray (1865-1939). One of the […]

Celebrating National Pet Month – a selection of open access resources on small animal medicine

This year National Pet Month runs from 1 April- 6 May.  As their web site says they are on a mission to: help promote responsible pet ownership across the UK highlight the important work of pet care professionals and working companion animals raise money for the nation’s pet care charities As a library we have […]

Frontispiece from Mayhew's Dogs: their management

Changing times

The editorial in the issue of The Veterinary Record published 100 years ago today was titled  ‘Some changes in our profession’.  In it the author links the noticeable decline in equine veterinary work to the development of ‘motor traction’ but also notes that: “new channels of work are opening up to us in compensation…The two […]

Domestic rabbits in 'A Practical Treatise...' by Moubray, 1834

Rabbits: from prey to pet

Even though the domestication of the rabbit occurred 2000 years ago, rabbit care before the 19th century was not in the local vet or farmer’s repertoire.  This explains the lack of lagomorph related content in our historical collection. Contrary to what you may think, rabbits don’t belong to the rodent order but sit in a […]

The Dog: its external and internal organisation. Plate 5 the internal organs

The many layers of the dog

There has been a lot of discussion of anatomical illustrations recently following the opening of the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery Leonardo da Vinci anatomist.  We have a number of stunning anatomical illustrations in the Historical Collection – the most well known would be in Stubbs’ The anatomy of the horse and then there are […]

Picture from 'Illustrated Book of the Dog', by Vero Shaw (1890)

Pet keeping: a brief history

National Pet Month (7 April – 7 May) is now drawing to a close but one of the enduring messages of the initiative is the benefits of pets for people, and vice versa.   What we need from our companion animals has changed over the centuries, dogs are no longer solely hunting partners, and cats are […]