The Largely Equine History of Veterinary Medicine

Vets have been around for a long time, but mainly to care for horses. When horse travel went away, guess who saved the profession? Dogs!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
Stuff you should Know? Was that a horse? Arrail? Goat it?
Take your pick, buddy. Well. The working title for this

(00:24):
one is history of Veterinary Medicine? Or when did people
stop only caring about horses and cows when it comes
to animals? The answer to that question is pretty recently, actually,
And yeah, and I should just say live stock. Sure,
just eighteen word title live stock. Livestock is a great word.

(00:48):
And then masked is also one of my favorite words
for the kind of earthy homeliness it has to it last.
The collection of edible nuts that pigs and squirrels, Yeah,
off of youah, masked acorns, chestnuts, All that stuff is
under the umbrella of mast don't you? Isn't it like livestock?
Livestock masked, measuring things by the foot, wearing like a

(01:12):
cloth hat like it all just kind of has that
same vibe going on. And I love it all, Yeah,
because I can picture a stinker squirrel just like chewing
and going, hey, you want to go get some masked.
We're running low one mass. Let's get some more mask guys.
After this mask and the other mask. We've only got
two masks left. All right. Uh, Olivia did a great

(01:34):
job because when I asked for an article about vetinary medicine,
I was like, who whoa, whoa, whoa. It was like,
what I really want is like the history of vetinary medicine.
Not one of those old kind of articles where it's
like to become a vet you should. I mean, there's
a little bit of that at the very end, but
I found this endlessly fascinating to see where we were

(01:55):
and where we are now. Yeah, it's kind of like
the History of dentistry episode you ailed up look at that,
so um, yeah, you have a thing with history of
medical fields. Apparently, so we're talking about vets, specifically the
history of veterinary medicine, and we don't exactly know when

(02:16):
it starts. Our first unambiguous evidence that people were caring
medically for animals comes about forty one ish hundred years
ago in the Mesopotamian city of Lagash, where somebody named
La Ladina m I was mentioned as somebody who was
an expert in healing animals. I guess scrawled on a

(02:38):
bathroom wall somewhere in Lagash. But we presume that the
people were caring for animals thousands of years before that,
because we domesticated animals thousands of years before that, and
just by the very virtue of us depending on those animals,
somebody along the way figured out it's kind of important
to keep these animals healthy and happy, and we need

(02:59):
to figure out tips and techniques for doing that. And
that was really the birth of veterinary medicine. Yeah, I mean,
you're their lives depended on these this live stock, live
stock mass uh, And so of course they wanted to
keep these things alive so they could use them in
all the ways that they were used. Uh. And of

(03:20):
course we're talking about at the time, like very rudimentary
stuff like hey, what should we feed them? And then uh,
let's watch and are they thriving? So let's either feed
them more of that or less of this. So in
other words, let's work on their diet. Let's who we
can get that right, Let's see what kind of like
herbs and fruits and roots and things like that we

(03:43):
could use to try and heal them. Uh. There's the
actual word veterinarian, which is an English term based on
the Latin verb the the hearing v A v e
h e r i, which is to draw, as in
like you know, uh, drawing horse or something like that,
like a horse drawing a wagon. It was. It was

(04:05):
because you could win an art scholarship if you could
draw that. Barrot right. Horses were the one thing that
I could draw because I had a book once that
taught me how to draw. Really, so you start with three.
Is that a book or a movie or something? I
don't know. It sounds like something done it um? Is
that what it is? Okay? So you start, You start

(04:26):
with a big circle, and then you make a slightly
less big circle a little to the left of that,
and then a little up into the left above that
slightly less big circle, you do a smallish circle, and
then you've got the rump, the front, and the head
of the horse, and you just start filling lines in
from there. And believe me, it works. Yeah, it really

(04:48):
works really well. Can you still draw a horse? I
haven't tried in a really long time, But will you
try and draw a horse and put that on your Instagram?
I would please? I will. By Josh oh that's funny. Um.

(05:10):
And then look, you know, you can look back on
that when you're fifty six and have all those fun
memories like I was so terrible at drying. We can
pull it out and say look what you did when
you were Uh. So we're gonna get to the US.
But all of this action right now, in terms of
caring for cattle and horses and cheap and things, is
in medieval or is in Europe. And in medieval Europe, um,

(05:32):
you might you know, have a status symbol animal like hey,
I'm a falconer or something. Check out this bad boy
or look at these regal greyhounds. So they would care
in that case very specifically, would care for what we
might think of as a pet. But that was not
the common thing, and pets as far as veterinary care

(05:53):
didn't come around so much much later. No, but this
does support part of a long standing trip Asian that
exists still today that the the well off to the
uber wealthy are responsible for funding veterinary practices. You know. Yeah,
and um, in in Great Britain, in the United States, UM,

(06:17):
the ideas were that if you were responsible for um,
for putting shoes on a horse, if you were a ferrier.
You also more often I think than putting shoes on
a horseback, then you would carve their toe nails or
their hoofs I guess is another way to put it
if you want to get technical. Um, but there's a
certain way you can carve them to make them faster,

(06:39):
to make them more stable, to make sure they're not
their feet aren't aching that kind of thing, and that
kind of evolved into the earliest um I guess in
the US and Great Britain practitioners of of horse medical care.
If if you went to see the ferrier that he
could probably help you with your horse, especially if you
needed your horses John cut Off. Yeah, they they would.

(07:02):
That's one of the surgeries they would a fairier could
perform for you. You could also go to a cow
leach um, which is just kind of what you think.
It's someone who, uh, you know, someone who takes care
of hows. I guess it would use leeching methods and things,
but it was someone who specialized in dealing with your
sick cow. And again they were the fairiers, and the

(07:24):
cow leaches did this stuff because they were just around
them all the time, So it makes sense if you're
shoeing a horse, you're just you have more maybe an
intuitive sense of how to help a horse, you know
what I'm saying. Yeah, And so you would basically learn
this as an apprentice, which means that some my good
ideas were passed along, some really bad ideas were passed along.

(07:44):
There wasn't any book learning about caring for animals at
the time, and there wasn't a lot of specialization outside
of fairiers um and I guess aside from I get
the impression that cows were getting some side attention here,
but for the most part, it was horse horse horse.
Of course, that was like the driving force of the

(08:09):
establishment of veterinary medicine as a as an actual specialist field. Yeah,
big time. And you might not be surprised. You may
be surprised to learn that it sort of not quite
lock step, but it sort of progressed. It feels like
just behind medicine on humans, Like as we started dissecting humans,
they started dissecting horses, and it just sort of makes sense.

(08:32):
It's like, these are other living mammals, and if we
learn how to study bones and muscles and organs of people,
then we can certainly learn how to do that on
this horse A sea change book came along in six
by Uh would that be Gervaise or Gervaise I'm going
with Gervaise, Okay, Gervais Markham called the new hotel name

(08:56):
by the ways mark them. Yeah, oh boy, I'd stay there.
Um and I love how I like on the nose. No, no,
the fake name you used to check the name of.
That sounds like during the January break. That sounds like
a hotel, Jane Gervais Markham. It sounds more like a

(09:18):
white heel um law firm. Alright, maybe is that the
right term, white heel. I don't know, well healed, well
he whe No, white hot, a white hot law firm. Yeah,
now I get you. Now. No, that's a great hotel
name to check in under Gervais market. Uh. And this

(09:40):
was back when book titles were more of a description
of what's in the book rather than and they still
try and get to that, like we learned that when
we titled our own book. But they were really on
the nose. Back then, this was called Markham's Masterpiece spelled
pe c containing all knowledge belonging to Smith, Ferrier or
worse leech touching on curing all diseases and horses. And

(10:04):
I'm not joking when I said this thing was a
big deal. It was the go to book for two
hundred plus years. They were printing this thing two hundred years.
Imagine if our book was printed for the next two
hundred years, this would essentially be like the Horse Caring
for Bible, is what it was. The problem is this again,

(10:25):
a lot of those bad ideas um got put into
this book too and spread, like using leeches for blood letting,
um for things like purging, which I think is exactly
what it sounds like, Yeah, exactly, using herbal remedies, some
of which may or may not have worked. It's not
like we're saying like, nope, modern veterinary message is the

(10:46):
only possible way to care for an animal. Like I'm
sure a lot of these folk remedies did actually work,
just from you know, people trying them over and over
again finding this this this is pretty effective. But there
was also a lot of bunk in there too. Yet
these books were good enough that they for two hundred
years they were used to care for horses. I just

(11:07):
want to make sure that we got that point across.
Should we take a breaker weight let's take a break, Chuck,
I'm getting a little riled up. Let's take a break. Good,
settle downy Okay, Chuck, you talked about a sea change.

(11:43):
You want to talk about a real sea change. I
got one right here. There's a guy named Claude borg
Lot Lot. Yeah. He was a Riding Academy instructor actually,
the guy who ran the Riding Academy and Leon France
back in the seventeen sixties. And um, he said, you

(12:04):
know what, there's not a lot of like formal science
based education in caring for horses. And I think that's problematic.
So I'm going to write a little book in seventeen fifty, um,
talking about how to care for horses. But also I'm
going to kind of like go to Louis in his

(12:25):
court and say, guys, this is really, actually very important.
Horses have an enormous impact on our lives, and um,
I really think that we should start setting up horse
veterinary schools. And Louis the fifteenth said, Okay, I'm with you, man,
Let's let's try it. Yeah, he said, you wanna you
wanna keep hunting foxes? King Louis said sure, And he said,

(12:45):
well your horses aren't doing so hot, and there's no
school to make them feel better, So why don't you
fund this? And they funded it, I believe, sort of
temporarily at first, and I guess it proved to be,
you know, at least successful in off to really put
it on the books for good. I think what what
really changed things was something came along called, uh, the

(13:09):
render pest, which totally sounds like some folk horror movie
ari aster thing, But the render pest was the cattle
plague and it hit Europe in a big, big way,
and we're talking to the tune of about two hundred
million cattle dying over the course of what is that
like fifty something years in Europe alone. Yeah, in Europe.

(13:32):
So that that really made King Louise sit up and
take notice. So that short term grant become became permanent
state support. Uh. And this bourge a Lot guy was
he was a really big deal because he started a
couple of schools and it's it is what these schools did,
but it was also these schools then sprouting other schools,

(13:55):
and the people that he instructed then going on and
teaching others. It was really just the beginning of a movement,
which was vet School. And it was good that they
started that. Um that that that was kind of like
the ground zero for veterinary medicine because they seemed to
actually know what they were talking about. They used science based,
science backed best practices. Um. They It wasn't just a

(14:18):
lot of hokum, you know, they actually said, does this
actually work? Let's test it out, um. And so it
did spread, i think at first to Vienna in seventeen
sixty seven, about six years after the Leone School was
set up, uh, London, se Berlin, sevento. And then you know,

(14:38):
for those of us in America, you're like in America
in well, it wasn't about a little less than a
hundred years later beside before America really started to get
serious about veterinary medicine. Yeah. It was almost as if
the American colonists um set things up. They were like,

(15:00):
all right, we're gonna kind of do things like they
were done a hundred years ago in Europe where we
came from. Um that like we you know, they cared
about horses and cattle just in the same way that
you know, as far as depending on them for all
the things that livestock provided but it was not. It
was just way less advanced. They were still doing the

(15:20):
the let's feed him this and see what happens, and
and again, this is a new country, so they were
there was a bit of a learning curve I think,
as far as um climate and like what's available to
eat and stuff like that, But it wasn't so different
that they had to kind of go back a hundred years.
I don't think they were still using Gervais Markham's book
right though they were actually right, they definitely were. Yeah,

(15:43):
the thing I saw it described as so in the
United States in particular, it was just basically taken for
granted that if you own a horse or you own livestock,
you the horse owner, the farmer, has the knowledge to
care for and keep those those animals healthy. That that

(16:03):
it's your responsibility. That it was just viewed as you know, um,
veterinary medicine was just viewed as another chore around the farm.
It was not something that you need a book learning for.
You didn't need some pencil neck from the city to
come tell you how to do it right. Um. It
was just up to the farmer, the horse owner to
to care for their animal. Yeah, and I've got something

(16:24):
kind of staggering here that Lvia dug up um that horses.
Of course, here we go again. Man, it's so hard
to not say horses were the main animal that everyone
was concerned with. But uh. There was an analysis of
advertisements for veterinary remedies found in Tennessee newspapers from eight

(16:47):
and found that more than half worse from were for
horses and then following in order, where cow's, chickens, hogs,
and sheep. And what's astounding to me is that means
that someone did in an elysis a veterinary remedy advertisements
in Tennessee It's papers. Yeah, you got me with that.

(17:09):
I was gonna be like, so you found that astounding
up pulled it out at the end, some people who
had too much funding. Do you think O Livia did it? No.
I saw the paper and I don't remember who wrote it. Oh, man,
I was so hoping she'd be like, guys, I went
over and above this time it was me. Um so
the thing that um oh what was his name, Claude

(17:31):
bourge a lot, the guy who founded the Leon Veterinary
Academy that kind of spawned so many others. The thing
that he worened Louis the fifteenth about like, hey man,
you really depend on horses a lot. We need to
keep them safe. That kind of came in bit America,
horse bit America in the rear end um, because by
the eighteen seventies there was a horse um plague kind

(17:55):
of like cattle render pest, which, by the way, Chuck,
I just want to say this. Do you know render
pest is one of two diseases considered eradicated from Earth,
the other being smallpox. Yeah, it's almost kind of like
how smallpox devastated humanity. Render pest devastated cattle for very
a very very long time. And so we just said,

(18:15):
we're done with this, and so in two thousand and
eleven it was declared eradicated. They should decide that about
all disease. I agree. They're like, we're still making our
mind up about the other. We're done with this one,
let's get rid of it. So there was a horse
plague that came around at least some sort of epidemic
that really kind of spread throughout the United States, and um,

(18:38):
it showed America like, hey, you guys really depend on
horses because the horses all called in sick to work.
Mm hmm. They did, and this is a time when uh,
there was I think what they responded with was, hey,
we need to care for our horses. But it wasn't
necessarily medical care. Still, it was, you know, again, let's

(19:00):
see if we can get their diet better. Maybe if
these horses are really sick, we should clean their stables
out more. Maybe we should you know, change their blankets
out and give them clean blankets, things like that. But
it still wasn't and you know, they had sort of
the home remedies and stuff they were still doing, but
it still wasn't this I guess what would have been
at the time advanced medical veterinary care happening. No, And

(19:22):
as a result, because they hadn't really figured this out yet,
those horses that were sick. Um the fire, the Great
Fire of Boston in eighteen seventy two burned as badly
as it did because the fire department basically had to
show up on foot. There weren't any horses available. They
were all sick. And also from that outbreak in the
eighteen seventies, the A s p c. A UM developed

(19:44):
and was actually given policing powers in New York City
because they would go around and inspect horses out on
the street to see if they were sick. Because if
you were an owner and you were making your horse
work sick, you were in big trouble, especially with the
A s p c A, because you could make other
horses sick or you were just doing the wrong thing both. Okay, yeah,
that's good to know. And again this is in America.

(20:07):
They were lagging behind such that they were still uh
using like you know, charms and rituals and spells and
things in some kind of rural parts of America. At first,
it's kind of funny to think about, but this is
this is what it looked like at the time. Chuck
tell them how to cure bots, which is parasitic fly
infection that horses can get. Well. If you're talking about

(20:29):
the one from Bok mhm, this is from a healer,
I guess a horse healer in Pennsylvania and boxes that
parasitic infection. Uh, here's what you would do. I no
way you're making me read this. Uh. You would quote
stroke the horse down with the hand three times. M

(20:51):
so far, so good, lead it about three times, holding
its head towards the sun. Saying the Holy One saith
Jose have passed over a field, and there he found
three small worms, the one being black, another being brown,
and the third being read thou shalt die and be dead.

(21:14):
Can imagine passing your neighbor while they were doing this.
Wouldn't just be like, we need to get locks for
our doors. They just stroke that horse down three times. Yeah,
So moving on, Chuck. Finally, in the United States, Uh,
medicine itself wasn't really professionalized until the eighteen forties. Um,

(21:36):
but around the same time, kind of like you were saying,
and I think it was great Britain where the anatomists
and the veterinarians started kind of working side by side,
are co evolving. A similar thing happened in the United
States again just a hundred years later. So weird that
it took that long. And then finally, Um, it was

(21:57):
in large part thanks to the the Civil War too,
that gave people a great appreciation of all the importance
of the horse and how much we needed to care
for him. The thing is, we're still totally focused on
the horse, not just in the United States but around
the world. If you were a veterinarian, all you do

(22:18):
is horses, maybe cows, maybe chickens if you have a
huge gambling problem and are in debt or sheep, that's
but that's about it. Yeah, but really the big focuses
on horses still just horses, guys. I promise we're going
to get to doggies and kiddies at some point the
last two minutes. A big step forward was in eighteen

(22:40):
sixty three there were some veterinary surgeons from seven different
states who met in New York City and said, had
some drinks and said, have you seen what's going on
out there in the country, Like they're stroking horses down
and like they're doing whitches spells and it's just the
Stone Age. We need to get it together and said

(23:01):
They said b to that, and they established the U
S Veterinary Medical Association, which would become the American Vetinarity
Veterinary Medical Association, and said, you know what we should do.
Will let anyone in who is who says they are
a practicing veterinarian uh that has or even a student
that has at least three years experience, and they could

(23:24):
get in if they can practice, if they could pass
an oral exam like that, you got good teeth. That's
what I actually thought when I first read that. By
the way, really for for two seconds, I was like,
what has that got to do with what a dummy? Uh?
If they passed an oral exam and could provide documentation
or even just testimonials that said, you know, these are

(23:46):
my qualifications. Plus they had to walk around the room
with a stack of books on their heads without dumping
them over, that's right, very important work. Uh. And Josiah H. Stickney,
as a graduate of Harvard Medical School, was the very
first president of of the I guess at the time

(24:06):
the us v m A. And that's uh, that's that's legit.
You know, Harvard Medical School, you're right there in five
step with with medical doctors at the time. Right. So
that became the American Veterinary Medical Association, which is still
around today. And this was the eighteen sixties. And then

(24:27):
Congress even said, hey, get this, we want to get
in on the act. If you are a if you're
in the cavalry, uh, you have to have at least
one fairier in a regiment, and that fairier. If you're
going to take care of horses, you have to have
a degree from a veterinary college. We're gonna start taking
this seriously from now on, everybody. Okay, no more messing around,
no more heck craft or anything like that. We're done

(24:50):
with that. We're gonna get into science now. Yeah, quit
stroking down that horse and go to school. Uh. A
lot of veterinary institution and sprang out from this, and
these were for profit places. The quality was very uneven.
He still hapn't about that. The quality was very uneven

(25:11):
at these schools, and most of them were in big cities,
of course, still focusing on those horses. But then something
weird happened. The automobile came along. Horses were kind of
kicked to the curb literally and off the streets, and
all of a sudden, a lot of these uh, veterinary
schools closed up shop. They're like, well, that's it, that's

(25:34):
that's our practice. What else is there to do? And
by the end of the nineteen twenties they were all
but gone. Yes, but there was a an astounding stroke
of good luck for the veterinarians who were who were
around at the time. Okay, and that is that um
up to that point, like if you treated anything but horses,

(25:56):
you were on a descending hierarchy kind of like I
was talking about before, and one thing you just did
not do was treat dogs. If you're a veterinarian, you
did not treat dogs. And veterinarians were totally fine with
that until the horse kind of lost its importance like
you were talking about, and so veterinarians kind of started
to look around and they realized that in Great Britain

(26:17):
there was a woman named Maria Dicken who had established
the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor. Yes,
free treatment to any sick animals anybody brought in. It
was a real hit among the poor and cheapscape pet
owners at the time. And um, they were doing it
without any veterinary training whatsoever. They were just using trial

(26:40):
and error. And just from that kind of experience, I
actually got really good at treating dogs. And so veterinarians said, well,
we don't have horses to practice on anymore. We're gonna
take over dogs and we're going to go after the
p ds A and basically make them work with us.
All Right, I feel like that's a great the little

(27:00):
cliffhanger there, we're finally at doggies. We're still not at kiddies.
Yet everybody, believe it or not, they too, even a
little bit longer. But we'll get to that right after this.

(27:34):
All right, So where we left off was you introduced
a woman named Maria Dicken who did great work kind
of founding the idea of what do you call him,
like like like you know, like a free animal clinic. Yeah,
free clinic for animals. Yeah, free for animals. I feel

(27:57):
like there's a word that I can't quint land end on.
It's free clinic. No, that's not it, but but that
is it. So it's fine. But in the inboratory, she
didn't know she did great work. Uh they I think
they had a patient load at one point. Now, okay,

(28:17):
but then I'm out of ideas of over four hundred
thousand um like treatments per year. That's a that's a lot.
But like you said, the people that studied in school
to be vets all of a sudden found their callfers
empty because all the horses were just standing around doing nothing. Now,
and a very wealthy woman left fifty thou pounds to

(28:38):
the p d s A and the Royal College of
Veterinary Surgeons said, well wait a minute, we we should
have some of that money, because you're giving all this
money to this place it's not even accredited with doctors.
And that's what kind of got them together. And they
started hiring doctors, either kind of permanently as full time
staff or farming their cases to these professional doctors. Right,

(29:03):
and so veterinary medicine kind of transitioned at the same time.
Uh that people in the West and Great Britain in
the United States as well, We're starting to kind of
change how they viewed dogs, like their dogs were brought
in from the outside. They became members of the family
UM and so as such, people were willing to spend

(29:25):
money on their medical treatment and they would go to
medical professionals and the veterinary practitioners were waiting there with
open arms and UM bills in hand. That's right. Uh
So we move on to our second hero of the story.
If you're a cat person, you need to know this
man's name, and it was Louis or Louie. Do you

(29:46):
know which one. Let's go with Louis Louis. No, No, no, no,
I'm sorry. I realized now it's got to be Louis.
It is Louis because his name is Louis Commody. That's right.
Louis Jacob Moody was in a veterinary a specialist in
New York City and Louis Comody said, you know what,

(30:10):
A cat saved my life. When I was a kid,
there was a house fire and I guess this cat
went over to him and went fire and woke Moody up.
And this is his story. And he said, so you
know what I'm gonna do. I am going to dedicate
my life to caring for the cats of the Greater

(30:32):
New York area. And everyone went, you mean cats? You
mean these things? We those things we kick off the
sidewalk because they're annoying us. And he went, cats the
thing that saved my life, right and um. He actually
his daughter credited him with elevating cats to the status

(30:52):
they enjoy now. Again it's like a beloved member of
the family. Before if you kept cats around, it was
probably because you had a rat problem. The cats provided
a function. They were like, you know, working animals in
a lot of ways, and all of a sudden their pets. Um.
And he wrote a book called All My Patients Are
under the Bed. It is super cute. Um. So Louie commuty. Second, uh,

(31:16):
second hero, and then there's another hero that comes up
in a second. I don't want to jump too far ahead,
but I'm gonna give everybody your name. Her name is
Lilah Miller, and she is known as the mother of
shelter medicine. And thanks to her in the nineteen seventies
and people working in the decades leading up to that, UM,
we went from the wholesale slaughter of dogs and cats

(31:41):
unwanted dogs and cats too, essentially no kill shelters that
killed just a tiny fraction euthanized a tiny fraction of
the dogs and cats that come coming to their their doors. Shelter.
That was the word I was looking for. No, that
wasn't quite right. No, an infirmary works better, clinic works better,

(32:02):
laboratory works better than shelter. All of them worked better. YEA,
Sometimes you're looking for the wrong word, you know. Yeah,
I guess, So you just gotta own it. Uh yeah.
So we don't have to get to in depth here,
but suffice to say, like well into the nineteen seventies,
the way we got rid of um stray dogs and
stray cats was reprehensible and terrible. I have to say

(32:25):
one thing, though, I agree, we don't need to get
into it, but um, there were so you know how
like there's just like it's literally open season on some
animals that there's too much of still today they call
them cullings or whatever. It was like that in the cities,
but with dogs and cats. But it makes you think like, okay,
well everybody back then was super heartless. Not true. There

(32:46):
were sociopathic sickos who would become those people who who
like killed their quota and there weren't quotas, by the way,
but they would round these these dogs and cats up
and carry them off in the wagon. Does wagons would
be frequently attacked and the drivers like beaten and the
cats and dogs inside freed by just average residents in

(33:08):
a city when they saw these wagons go past, even
back then, so they were like I think most people
still felt about you know, animals like dogs and cats
like we do today, just they didn't keep them in
their house. But they still saw him as these living,
sentient beings that are worthwhile and shouldn't just be you know,
murdered for good reason by some the local sicko. Totally alright,

(33:32):
So back to Lilah, Miller, I'm glad you said that,
because that's that's a pretty good, uh factoid. I'm not
I'm not for taking matters in your own hands and
like street violence, but I don't know in that case,
free the dogs. And I'm glad you said that because
I couldn't tell if you were bored with my story
or not. No, not at all. Uh. It reminds me

(33:52):
of a T shirt Emily has That's a very popular
shirts is be kind to animals or I'll kill you.
That's a great So Lila Miller, she was one of
the very first UH African American woman to graduate from
Cornell's Veterinary College. She was the one, like you said,

(34:12):
she came along said we can do better. At the time,
even if you know, I mean, I guess they were
mostly kill shelters at the time. Um, but even if
maybe you were one of the few that wasn't, it
was still probably like a warehouse, uh that didn't have
great care for animals. It just was not like what

(34:32):
it is today. And we have Lila Miller to thank
for that. Yeah. She um to change protocols, Yeah for sure. Um.
She she like she basically came into the field and said,
this is all low hanging fruit. We're doing basically nothing
to help improve the lot of these animals. So let's
start doing things like setting up adoption programs, making sure

(34:55):
they get vaccinated, making sure they get spayed and newter.
That was a fairly recent thing from the sixties or
the seventies. Maybe um oh no, I'm sorry from it
started in the thirties, but culturally it wasn't a really
big thing until the sixties or the seventies thanks to
people like Lyla Miller and Bob Barker no joke. Um.

(35:17):
And and as a result, because of these these protocols
that she came up within just the complete change and
attitude she brought to animal shelters, um, the rates of
euthan asia just plummeted in cities around the country. Like,
if you want to be grossed out, go look at
euthanasia rates of cities like Los Angeles or New York

(35:38):
or Boston in like nineteen sixty. Um, it's just mind boggling.
And now it's down to just a small fraction of
what it used to be because so many of those
dogs are adopted out because of these change of protocols.
Thanks to Lyla Miller and others like her. Yeah, and
I mean, just so much has changed since then, Uh

(35:58):
as the dog and cat population has grown, and even
more and more pets have have come inside. I mean
you think, like, yeah, people started having pets a while ago,
and uh, and it's been fairly static. But get this
stat between the number of pet dogs in the US

(36:19):
grew by fifty and by almost two thirds of household
pets owned at least or households owned at least one pet,
and those pets sometimes had pets where. Uh and just
the you know, you and I grew up in the
seventies and eighties. I'm a little bit older, but I
even remember being a kid and like very shamefully, I mean,

(36:40):
we didn't live in the country, but we lived you know,
we lived in the woods on a couple of acres
in suburban Atlanta. And like my parents grew up in
and not rural Tennessee. But you know, they didn't grow
up in big cities in the nineteen like forties and fifties.
So like I, we didn't take our animals to the
that like, we had cats that came and went, they

(37:03):
weren't inside. We had dogs that were out in an outdoor.
And that's not to say, like, you know, if people
have a very nice outdoor enclosure for their dog and
that works for them and the dog is safe, that's
a personal choice. I think all dogs should be in
bed with you personally. But I'm not gonna like, I'm
not shaming people that might have an outdoor dog or

(37:24):
cat as long as they're really really cared for. It's
not what I do. But back then, like our animals
never came inside. If a cat happened to run inside,
it was like, get them out of here. And I
wasn't saying that. I was like, oh, the cats inside,
the cat's inside. But like the the notion of uh
and this was like even veterinary care, Like if they

(37:44):
really really really needed something, our animals would go to
the vet. And this is like the shameful admission. This
isn't not trying to like out my family, but this
is kind of how it was, is what I'm saying.
And but the notion of taking your animals in once
a year for a checkup, right, was just people didn't
do that kind of thing back then. No, it's a

(38:05):
really relatively new thing, and it's it's evolved in lockstep
with the amount of money that the middle class and
upwards were willing to pay to to take care of
their pets. In the amount of pets. That's part of
it too. And also I believe that veterinarians have um
come up with new and amazing ways to to bill

(38:26):
you that you can't spend money on your pets. Oh
God bless them. We'd spend a lot of money there
for sure. And then also there's been um a lot
more specialization as a result, so you don't have to
go to the same vet for your dogs, you know,
Raby's shot and to treat their you know, tumor or
something like that. Like there's there's pet oncologists, neurologists, epidemiologists, um,

(38:51):
it's it's really something. But because veterinarians they they don't
learn essentially as a profession, they went from being completely
with all their eggs in the horse basket to totally
abandoning the horse and putting it all in the pet basket.
And as a result, there's this there's a real shortage
of rural veterinarians who are large animal vets that know

(39:14):
how to work on a horse, that that know how
to work on a cow. Um, and I'm guessing that
that's going to be something that will have to be
addressed eventually. Yeah for sure. I mean it's really amazing
how things have changed in the past, like you know,
thirty forty years in the U. States. Uh. And I
want to shout out my vet. Can I do that? Uh? Yes, Well,

(39:40):
I'm gonna shout out Avondale Vetinary Hospital because they're great.
We followed our doctor Stacy Stacy is her name, when
she left our old VET to go to a new practice.
We followed her there because she's so great. So big
ups to Dr Stacy and Dr Graff and Michelle and
Kim and Leona and Cat and Abbey and Jordan and

(40:02):
Jennifer and Carrey and everyone else who helps out there. Uh,
they're awesome. And I just you know, more and more
people are becoming and you know, we should mention another
reason that there's more veterinary care is more people are
interested in becoming vets. Um that that job has really
exploded over the last twenty or thirty years. Yeah, for sure,
it's good work. Um, I guess I'll showed up mose Vet.

(40:25):
We're actually torn right now because mose Vet left Dr Jennasco,
who's awesome. She went to another practice. But we love
the practice that Mos at so much for like hemming
and hauling about. That's tough. See, we were ready to leave.
We're getting a little frustrated with other parks parts of
the old practice. So when Dr Stacy left, we were like,

(40:48):
oh great, this is perfect. That's awesome. So that's a
tough decision for you. It is the compromise we came
up with. We're just going to get We're gonna double
up on everything that mogus done. Just go to both
one right after the other. Man. Double in your bed, Bill,
I love it. I have a little Mo anecdote if
you don't mind me sharing, I would love to hear

(41:08):
about little Momo. So you me told me just this
morning that Mo has a new um. So you said
dogs should sleep in bed with you. Mo definitely sleeps
in bed with us. Um and most developed a new
habit where uh you mean will be spooning Mo and
Mo will decide that she wants to get on the
other side now. But rather than just get up and

(41:29):
crawl over you mean get on the other side, she
wants you me to spoon her, but on the other side,
so she'll tap you me until she wakes up, Yeah,
and gets that she needs to roll over now because
Mo wants to spoon on this boy. Mo runs us
for sure. Well, yeah, at least somebody's in charge, that's right.

(41:51):
Are you got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well,
if you want to know more about veterinarians, go get
friendly with the veterinarian. They'll tell you what you want
to know. Uh. And since I said that, it's time
for listener mail, all right, so I can't put it
off any longer. We're gonna go through some of the
favorite tangents of two from from Ian Bowers of San Dusky, Ohio.

(42:18):
Ian put together our Tangents and non Sequiturs list, and
we said, hey, if you want to keep doing this,
we'll read it. And so Ian said, great, So here
we go. I'm gonna go through these pretty quick. But
these are these are fun walk down memory lane for us,
because we we forget these jokes all the time. The
Mystery of the towy Bee Tiles Josh's Love of the

(42:38):
Alfred Hitchcock presents the three Detectives books. The Mystery of
Coal episode uh, stainless steel pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics,
and how you still haven't seen them? Yeah, that one's
popped up a few times. Water Land acknowledgements from May tenth.
A Beastie Boys dad joke leads Chuck and Josh to
reciting their favorite Beastie Boys line, and Chuck reveals the

(42:59):
acts sidentally taught his daughter and the inappropriate Beastie Boys
lyric when she was too young. Did I tell you
off the air? No, I don't believe you did. Alright,
So we're gonna take a short break and I'll let
you know right now and then we'll be back in
one second. Oh my goodness. So well, okay, Well that's

(43:21):
Josh's literal reaction to what I just told him. I'm
so sorry, everybody, what a tease. I can't tell everybody sorry.
Uh oh. Interestingly, Cat's invasive species long discussion right at
the top of Josh and Chuck's favorite newspaper cartoon strips.
Sure of course. Uh. May thirty one, The Scintillating World
of Interest rates discussion of the movie The Green Knight, lean,

(43:44):
Josh and Chuck agreeing that has a flawless streak of
movie releases rock and We're gonna go see the Whale
in the theater soon and I don't want to know
anything about it other than released it. Uh, talk to
me after you see it. Um. June seventh, Freedom of
the Press, a very intricate, descriptive three minute discussion of
how Josh and Chuck would ride a horse over a cliff.

(44:05):
I remember this one wearing individual parachutes. I remember that too.
We landed safely, if I remember correctly, we did. I
like that when that bugs some people, though, UM, let
me see July five, ultra processed foods. Josh eating hot
wings while wearing finger condoms, and the director Chuck worked
for he would eat cheetahs wearing surgical gloves as a
bit that was Tom Schiller. Uh. Supernova July nineteenth, UM

(44:32):
discussion of which britpop bands are cool and which ones weren't.
Planet Sterilizing event should be our britpop album name is
what I said? And you said Zombie Stars the name
of our britpop band. Those two still work really well,
I agree, silly string Uh we Josh brings up a
video of a dog that got into a guerrilla enclosure

(44:52):
at a zoo. Oh. Yeah, that poor dog. I remember
that side note one of Josh's looser episodes, very amusing. Okay,
what was it against silly String? Yeah, I I can't
believe I didn't take silly String seriously. Short stuff, the
Burner Street hoax, Chuck's daughter's love of the songs girls
just want to have fun and her brief only girls

(45:13):
want to have fun and boys do not. M that's
still ongoing. By the way, is there really Yeah? September
six about Mallory and Mount everest um oh, not a tangent,
but Chuck casually mentioned the rope trauma. Josh Josh brussatt
Bush passed it without asking what happened to Chuck's dismay.
At that point, Chuck refused Chuck he should say, became

(45:36):
a big baby and refused to tell the story of
what happened. Despite Josh asking repeatedly, Chuck said, I'll take
it to his grave. Classic s y s came moment,
how the license place work, Chuck, Chuck's incredu incredulity. Sorry
that Josh didn't know what Sarah about Sans Sara, he
should say Chuck was a big jerk about the fact

(45:59):
that Josh to know that that was the one you
apologized about later, right, don't feel bad and no one
ever wants to be told who you know? I mean,
it just made me feel bad all over again. Uh.
And then finally, from just recently November on Goose Bumps,
whether all or just some of the members of the

(46:20):
band Boston to school it in m T Did we
ever figure that out? They definitely did not, But I
didn't look it up. I just knew that. Oh well,
that was very nice of you just gently walked past
it later on. Thanks Ian Bowers. Once again, this is
a lot of fun. We'll read them again next year.
Very nice. Thanks Ian, Thank you for um completing that

(46:42):
very stressful assignment. We would love it if you did
it again. Okay, I agreed. If you want to be
like Ian, you can't ianto one of a kind, but
you can get in touch with this and send us
an email of your own, Wrap it up, spanking on
the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

(47:02):
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,