Introduction The shared physicality of humans and animals -- as suggested by this early modern advice book on animal health -- was widely accepted in the seventeenth century. As historian Louise Hill Curth has noted, in this period ‘Almost all of the procedures that were used for humans were also applied to animals’ (Curth, 2010: 114). Since then, however, human and animal medicine appears to have taken a more dualistic form, with human medical care on one side and animal veterinary care on the other. The establishment of veterinary science as a separate profession, which took place during the nineteenth century, signalled that a very different model of care was -- and should be -- available for humans than for animals. A vet was never a human doctor, and vice versa. But this separation has rarely been more than skin-deep. Taking a close look at contemporary veterinary science, as we do in this living book, shows how difficult it is to maintain this separation. Everywhere humans and animals are entangled: we choose to share our homes with animals; we eat them; they both sicken and cure us. Equally, many animals rely on us for food and health; they invade ‘our’ spaces; they eat our (fleshy and other) waste; they suffer because of our illnesses. [(more...)]
18. Hope R. Ferdowsian, Debra L. Durham, Charles Kimwele, Godelieve Kranendonk,, Emily Otali, Timothy Akugizibwe, J. B. Mulcahy, Lilly Ajarova, Cassie Meré Johnson
