The Equine Stomach: A Personal Perspective (1963-2003) (21-Nov-2003)

1. State of the Art in 1963 It was in 1963 that I received my DVM from Cornell University. Developing a specialty in equine gastroenterology was the furthest thing from my mind. I was planning to be a cow doctor. Perhaps it was because of that bias, or because my memory is failing, that I remember virtually nothing that we might have been taught about equine gastrointestinal (GI) problems, except that surgical correction of a colic was a last resort that rarely had a favorable outcome. J.D. Wheat demonstrated the incorrectness of that maxim, however, during my internship the next year at the University of California at Davis. I no longer have the notes I took in veterinary school that document what I should have remembered, but I have had another look at some of the texts of that era, which now reside in the dank and cobwebbed lower depths of the Marston Science Library at the University of Florida. Those texts, and what they include with respect to the equine stomach are the following.