veterinary medicine

veterinary medicine, medical specialty concerned with the prevention, control, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases affecting the health of domestic and wild animals and with the prevention of transmission of animal diseases to people. Veterinarians ensure a safe food supply for people by monitoring and maintaining the health of food-producing animals.

Persons serving as doctors to animals have existed since the earliest recorded times, and veterinary practice was already established as a specialty as early as 2000 bce in Babylonia and Egypt. The ancient Greeks had a class of physicians who were called “horse-doctors,” and the Latin term for the specialty, veterinarius (“pertaining to beast of burden”), came to denote the field in modern times. Today veterinarians serve worldwide in private and corporate clinical practice, academic programs, private industry, government service, public health, and military services. They often are supported in their work by other veterinary medicine professionals, such as veterinary nurses and veterinary technicians.

Veterinary medicine has made many important contributions to animal and human health. Included are dramatic reductions in animal sources of human exposure to tuberculosis and brucellosis. Safe and effective vaccines have been developed for prevention of many companion (pet) animal diseases—e.g., canine distemper and feline distemper (panleukopenia). The vaccine developed for control of Marek’s disease in chickens was the first anticancer vaccine. Veterinarians developed surgical techniques, such as hip-joint replacement and organ transplants, that were later applied successfully to people.

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A major challenge to veterinary medicine is adequately attending to the diversity of animal species. Veterinarians address the health needs of domestic animals, including cats, dogs, chickens, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and goats; wildlife; zoo animals; pet birds; and ornamental fish. The sizes of animals that are treated vary from newborn hamsters to adult elephants, as do their economic values, which range from the undefinable value of pet animal companionship to the high monetary value of a winning racehorse. Medicating this variety of tame and wild animals requires special knowledge and skills.

On the basis of recognition by the World Health Organization (WHO) or the government of a country, there are about 450 veterinary degree programs worldwide. The level of veterinary training varies greatly among the various countries, and only about one-third of these programs designate the degree awarded as a doctor’s degree. Professional training of veterinarians is commonly divided into two phases. The first, or basic science, phase consists of classroom study and laboratory work in the preclinical sciences, including the fields of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, toxicology, nutrition, microbiology, and public health. The second phase focuses on the clinical sciences and includes classroom study of infectious and noninfectious diseases, diagnostic and clinical pathology, obstetrics, radiology, anesthesiology, surgery, and practice management and hands-on clinical experience in the college’s veterinary teaching hospital. The clinical experience gives students the opportunity to treat sick animals, perform surgery, and communicate with animal owners. Student activities in the clinical setting are conducted under the supervision of graduate veterinarians on the faculty. Several important opportunities for additional training are available to graduate veterinarians. Internship (one-year) and residency (two-to-five-year) programs enable veterinarians to gain clinical proficiency in one or two medical specialties. Graduate veterinarians can also pursue advanced degree programs. Usually the field of advanced study is medically oriented, but some seek advanced degrees in areas such as business.

Most clinical-practice veterinarians treat only companion animals and usually within the practice’s clinic, or animal hospital. A small proportion treat only food-producing animals or horses, most often by traveling to the location of the animal in a vehicle equipped for veterinary services in the field. Most of the remainder in clinical practice are in mixed practices, which deal with both small animals and large domestic animals such as cattle or horses. Some small-animal practices offer services for special species such as ornamental fish, caged birds, and reptiles. Some practices may limit work to a specific medical area such as surgery, dentistry, dermatology, or ophthalmology. Corporate-owned animal hospitals have increased in number and are often combined with a retail outlet for pet supplies.

Veterinarians in academia administer the basic and clinical science programs of veterinary colleges. In addition, they conduct basic and clinical research, the latter of which may involve application of new instrumentation technologies for diagnosis and treatment of animal diseases. Included are echocardiography, laser lithotripsy, endoscopy, nuclear scintigraphy, ultrasonography, computed tomography (CT) scans, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; see nuclear magnetic resonance).

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Veterinary medicine intersects with private industry in such areas as marketing of animal-health products, monitoring of animal health in large commercial animal-production programs, and biomedical research. Veterinary specialists in industry work in the fields of toxicology, laboratory animal medicine, pathology, molecular biology, and genetic engineering. Pharmaceutical companies employ veterinarians in the development, safety testing, and clinical evaluation of drugs, chemicals, and biological products such as antibiotics and vaccines for animals and people.

National and local governments employ veterinarians in those agencies charged with public health, protection of the environment, agricultural research, food and drug safety, food-animal inspection, the health of imported animals, and the humane treatment of animals. Veterinarians working in public-health programs, for example, evaluate the safety of food-processing plants, restaurants, and water supplies. They also monitor and help control animal and human disease outbreaks. The increased threat of bioterrorism has given veterinarians vital roles in the protection of the food supply for animals and people and in early detection of use of zoonotic organisms as weapons. Veterinarians also work in aerospace; e.g., they have been scientific advisers on animal use in the U.S. space program and have been members of U.S. space shuttle crews. Veterinarians in military service perform biomedical research, care for military dogs, and protect troops through food-inspection and communicable-disease monitoring-and-control programs.

See also animal disease.