An annotated bibliography of the history of medicine and health in Australia

be "comprehensively followed from the official reports". Fortunately, official publications and actual events at local level frequently show interesting discrepancies and nineteenth-century provincial newspapers are full of detailed and useful accounts of the epidemic that certainly deserve setting alongside these official records. Pattison clearly has veterinary heroes and villains, not all of whom perhaps deserve his praise or opprobrium; thus he writes equally enthusiastically of John McFadyean as a leader of the profession and of Alfred Adrian Jones, a sculptor-veterinarian. If one accepts that the history of a profession in Britain is to be found in its journals and publications, then Pattison's book will satisfy the reader. However, a comprehensive story of veterinary practice and practitioners remains to be told, especially the recruitment of veterinary surgeons, their social origins and contribution to community health. Much archive material survives on the early history of the profession; the records of the nineteenth-century provincial associations, practitioners' own account books, prescriptions and correspondence, as well as the veterinary surgeon's appearance in other contemporary records, being paid for his professional attendance, owning property and advertising his services in the press (permitted until 1894), and so on. A volume based on these materials has still to be written; in the meantime Pattison's book can be seen as one contribution towards a larger account.