150th anniversary of veterinary education and the veterinary profession in North America

This article is the first in a series of three to be published in the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education (JVME). These articles are abridged versions of six lectures that make up an elective course on the history of the veterinary profession in North America offered at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine in spring 2010. The course was based in large part on an oral history collection titled "An Enduring Veterinary Legacy"(1) that captures interesting and relevant veterinary stories. The course was designed to increase awareness of the history of veterinary medicine as we approach the sesquicentennial of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) in 2013 and as we join with our international colleagues in marking the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the world's first veterinary college in Lyon, France, in 2011.(2) The overarching goal of this course and the articles is to record and also to share first-person stories that describe the development of veterinary education and the veterinary profession in North America from the mid-1860s to the present. In the process, it is hoped that this history will encourage respect, love, and admiration for the veterinary profession and an appreciation of veterinary medicine as a versatile profession. The articles are somewhat Cornell-centric because the lectures on which they are based were presented to Cornell students at their home institution. However, it is hoped that the events are representative of the broader American experience. For educators interested in the course itself, a brief synopsis and a summary of student evaluations for the first year of presentation is appended here and in subsequent articles in this series.