Karl Bonhoeffer: Zum Hundertsten Geburtstag 31 März 1968

(2) This is a detailed history of veterinary education in Innsbruck from its Viennese beginnings in an institution founded after the Seven Years' War for the training of army blacksmiths to preserve the health of cavalry horses, and progressing to become a subject taught at the University of Innsbruck. One of the pioneers among the teachers was J. G. Wolstein whose book on cattle epidemics was translated into Latin and into nearly all the languages spoken in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He also founded the first veterinary hospital in Austria, which gradually extended its patients from horses to cattle, sheep and pigs. The planned Institute for Veterinary Medicine did not come into being during the period covered, and the subject was neglected, its teaching often being reduced to two or three hours a week, preferably between six and seven o'clock in the morning. Finally, with the growing centralization of administration and learning in Vienna, the Chair atInnsbruck University was allowed to lapse. This monograph fulfils exactly what its title promises. The unintended picture emerging is the fact that, by and large, well into the nineteenth century, animals and their health in our western civilization were only regarded as important in connection with war or as potential food. It is salutary to remember that the first veterinary hospital in India, founded by the Buddhist king Ashoka during the third century B.C., took in all manner of animals because they were suffering sentient beings.