Texas A&M Collection Of Rare Veterinary Medicine Books Is Unique

The Texas A&M University Libraries has acquired a book collection that is most definitely the cat’s meow – a collection of rare books about treating animals and animal care, with some of the books nearly 500 years old.

It’s a collection that every veterinary school in the world would envy, says Esther Carrigan, associate dean and director of the Medical Sciences Library.

“It is a remarkable collection and several of these books are not owned by any other library in the world,” Carrigan says.

“We recently purchased a collection that belonged a rural veterinarian of Reepham (near Norwich), England, that has more than 900 titles with special emphasis on horses and farriery. These books document veterinary medicine from the 16th to the early 20th century and detail diseases of the horse, which was considered the ‘working’ animal critical to farming and the military.”

The book purchase was supported in part through gifts and a fund-raising commitment by the Friends of Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M. Selections from the collection are on display at the Medical Sciences Library, where it is currently housed, in conjunction with the global observance of World Veterinary Year 2011, which celebrates the founding of veterinary medical education 250 years ago in Lyon, France.

Of particular note is the first published book on veterinary medicine, Vegetii Renati Artis Veterinariae (1528). Some of the rare books include The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes by Edward Topsell, which Carrigan says is an early work in zoology and has woodcut illustrations. It was published in 1607.

Another work is The English Horseman and Complete Farrier: Directing All Gentleman and Others How to Breed, Feed, Ride and Diet All Kinds of Horses, Whether for War, Race Or Other Service by Robert Almond. Published in 1673, the book says its author “is a well known and skillful farrier of the city of London, practicing therein above 45 years.”

“It is considered extremely rare and some British book dealers we have consulted say they have never seen a copy of it in over 50 years,” Carrigan notes.

Another book, The Anatomy of a Horse, by Andrew Snape, is one of the first written on equine anatomy that was published in English and is often called the first modern veterinary textbook, Carrigan says of the 1687 work.

One of the oldest books in the collection was written in 1528 by Vegetius Flavius and is about both military organization and veterinary medicine. “It was highly regarded at the time and frequently quoted by subsequent authors,” Carrigan says. Another, A Domestic Treatise on the Diseases of Horses and Dogs, was written by Delabere Blaine in 1803 who was an artist, professor and surgeon in London and well- known at the time.

The entire collection is being processed at the Medical Sciences Library. Rare materials will be housed in the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, home of Texas A&M’s rare books, manuscripts and archives.