Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Center for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh. I'm here with several colleagues to look at some of these really wonderful items which reflect some of the rich history of veterinary medicine. And Rachel Hosker is the archivist in charge of this sort of stuff. Rachel, do you want to just tell us a little bit about what you've got here and what it means for the veterinary history? Sure. We thought we'd put up some items on the table so we could look through the rich history that Edinburgh has for veterinary science, and show how the technology and the practice in Edinburgh has developed so that we give that context of where we are today, and for the [inaudible] that will progress further, and you'll see that throughout. So yes, some of the items will certainly display not just the anatomical drawing, not just the equipment that was used, but also the thought and the training that went on as well. And, of course, there are people who use your collection. Who comes and looks at this stuff? We have had veterinary students when they do their elective and they want to look at a little bit more of the context and background. But we have artists, we have traditional veterinary historians and the list can go on. And everybody is welcome to come and use the collections. So we had a rummage through earlier and we each chose an individual item to talk of about. And, Sharon, what's that weapon-like thing you've got? I'm going to talk about the quittor syringe which is something that William Dick would have recognized as a [inaudible]. Because quittor is a condition that is less common nowadays but it's something that affected horses quite a bit, particularly draft horses. They would get gravel in the hoof and the syringe would be used to flush out the gravel or to flush out any pustular infection that might have been involved. And it's quite good. We have a copy of an Arnold and Son's catalog, and we can see that the quittor syringe is almost an exact replica of the one that we have here which is good. It's good to be able to see that. It also shows hypodermic syringes. So if we think about hypodermic, hypo and derma from the Greek meaning under the skin, and the hypodermic syringe is made of two parts. You got the plunger and then the needle. And this brings us back to another interesting Edinburgh connection. Because it was an Edinburgh graduate, medical graduate, Alexander Wood who came up with the idea of bringing together the needle which I have to say was invented by an Irishman Francis Rynd in 1844. He developed the idea of this hollow needle and Alexander Wood took the plunger and design and put it together with the needle to develop the hypodermic syringe. Right about the same time, the mid 1850s, Charles Pravaz in France had come up with a design that was similar. But we can see it here just below in the Arnold and Son's catalog, there's a syringe that's got a kind of a screw design. So instead of using the plunger, it's got a screw which is quite fantastic. So that would have been interesting in terms of control of the liquid that you're putting in. So you turn that screw and then the plunger would probably just going to quite slowly go down, and yeah. Yes, I think so. So it will take a long time to get that big injection. Will do. So you can see why the hypodermic syringe that we know today was the one that took off. It was the one that was used because it's that simple design. And what we have here in the box is a glass hypodermic syringe. So it was about the late 1860s that you start to see the glass syringes come in which is good because you're able to keep them nice and clean. And here, the late 1800s, we've got a syringe set which has, I'd love to be able to take these things out but I can't. It's got the hypodermic syringe but it's also got little files of tablets which could be dissolved and then used in the syringe. And as I said this is the late 1800s that we're talking about something like that to carry around with you as you're out and about. And when we think about the reusable syringes that we have, we start to see the glass syringes. But the one-use syringes, glass syringe, the mid 1950s was when the one-use glass syringe came in and it was used for polio injections. And the plastic syringe was not that far, not that much later. You're talking about 1956 when New Zealander Murdoch came up with the idea of the plastic syringe. And then that's a one-use syringe. [OVERLAPPING] So it's amazing to think that if they are to own that syringe in that little box, would have had to each time you used it, clean it, and then put it away, and then bring it out again. Quite a lot of work involved giving the injection actually. Uh-um. Doesn't it? Great. Thanks very much. And, Fiona, this is a really rare thing here, isn't it? What's this book? Well, this is one of my favorite items from the collection. As veterinary librarian, I'm quite fond of books obviously. It's Ruini's Anatomy of A Horse, and it was published in 1598. It was published couple of months after he died. His son published it. But it's beautiful book. The plates are stunning to my mind. I think they're works of art in themselves as well as being a really fantastic anatomy for the time. At the time that Ruini published his book, it was the first to concentrate on any other animal apart from man. So it was the first anatomy of the horse. And some commentators have suggested that Ruini described the circulation of the blood before Harvey did. But the jury's out on that one. There are people who feel that that wasn't quite the case. But it was in 1873 that Ercolani first suggested that Ruini had discovered circulation of blood which I thought was quite interesting. You don't think the book is 400 years old. It doesn't look like a 400-year-old book. It looks like it's maybe 20 or 30 years possibly, but it is fantastic. And it has a lovely link I think to some of the other items in the collection. So we have a book by Andrew Snape which was published in 1683. And it's anatomy of a horse as well. His was called The Anatomy of An Horse. And he claimed that he was the first person to have produced an anatomy of the horse even though Ruini had done it before. And if you were being generous you could say, "Well maybe he didn't know. Maybe he hadn't seen Ruini's book." But of the 49 plates in Snape's book, 22 of them are direct copies of Ruini's. So it suggests that perhaps he'd seen them. And not only are they direct copies, but he's transposed them, so the organs are on the wrong side on the different side of the body as well. And you can see that in the app produced from the National Library of Medicine. So that could be quite confusing if a surgeon studies the wrong way around and then goes in and finds that it's not actually where it's meant to be. Exactly. That was exactly my thought. And it seems like plagiarism was perhaps a family trait as well. Because there's another item in our collection which is a plate of a Horse, again, showing the musculature of a horse. And it was produced by Edward Snape who claimed to have been a descendant of Andrew Snape. But when you look at Edward Snape's diagram, it itself is a copy or appears to be a copy of Jeremiah Bridges' plate. So they were all at it. They were all at, yes. Plagiarism isn't a new thing. And that reminds me of pictures that our students do even today. Quite similar in some ways. Coloring in the muscles, coloring in the different structures to help delineate them. So some things don't change, I guess. Well, I've chosen this object here which is an early stethoscope. I didn't realize it was that at first because it was arranged slightly differently in the box that we found it in. This is a modern stethoscope with its rubber hosing and this one would have had rubber as well or some sort of material, and it's lost that. It's all perished off. But we've got the basic elements of the stethoscope. The earpieces here, they look like pretty hard little things to go in the ear. They're probably made of a bit of clay or something like that. It was probably quite uncomfortable to actually wear this stethoscope. But the strangest thing about it is this huge and actually quite heavy diaphragm, which is the bit that you put against the animal's body in order to listen to the heart beat or the lungs or whatever. And if you look on a modern stethoscope, it's actually much smaller and it's incredibly light. So this is a huge, weighty thing. And if you have that in your pocket, you would certainly be aware that it was actually there. It's just physically really large. And what I'd hoped, as I mentioned to Rachel, was that we could use this stethoscope to listen to, I always wanted to try on my dog, Nipper. But, sadly, we've discovered that we don't have the hosing bit. I suppose is it just in time it's just deteriorated? It's just perished as rubber does. So we've got the parts of it, but it's in pieces at the moment as it's so old. And you've got what looks like a photo album, what's that? I thought I'd choose something that was from the other side of what you might experience in becoming a vet, which is the sort of student life side of it, the social side. So I chose some of the items from the Royal Veterinary College dramatic society in the 1940s. The reason I did that is because it shows more of the whole students' experience, and gives the idea of students having fun, having a laugh, and being able to do things could give them other skills to bring to the veterinary practice. So you see in some of the photographs that are staged, that the students have the confidence to be on stage, they have the confidence to be humorous. And you have to have that confidence in veterinary practice when talking to the owners of animals, talking even to the animals themselves. I think, it sounds very Dr. Dolittle, but the idea of having that wider sensibility to your study is quite important as well. We had some interesting conversations about artwork. And the students had undertaken a peotry in their own elective periods where they can choose what they do. So that they can place that veterinary practice and the veterinary study in that wider environment, and what it means in that wider environment as well. We also know there's a final year group at the moment that are working together on social events, the end of year ball, for example, and that's all part of the life there. What we see in the album as well is that they thought the other way round and brought some of their veterinary practice into the plays, and we see animals like little dog on stage in one of the plays. And some of the plays the titles are like Tequila Cats, or Grand National Night as well, so you get the idea of horses, and cats, and dogs being part of it as well. It does give you an idea of what has actually changed because we know that students still are quite involved in that social side of things with their colleagues. And, Andrew, you were saying that last night there was a musical event. That's right. Yes, yes. There were Dick Vet Music Society. Staff and students together, all getting nervous together, as we try to give a performance. But, yes, I think that's a wonderful thing. Veterinary medicine is such a long course. And that shows that students have always wanted to do other things to relax and to have a bit of fun. It's just such a beautiful object. Yes. And it's good. Some of the things we thought about as well. You got the confidence from the dramatic society where there's been a long history with the Dick Veterinary College and arts, not just the anatomical drawing, but other aspects of creativity. It can provide, for example, better hand-eye coordination. And you wouldn't naturally think of that straightaway. But we can see it in some of the items we have in the collections where students have done other things and then it's been brought into their practice as well. Well, that's incredible. So we're now going to spend the rest of the day looking at all the rest of these beautiful things here. But, hopefully, that's given a little bit of an indication of what might be taught, material culture that could be used to investigate veterinary history.
