Beginning of the veterinary medicine in Argentinean

THE BEGINNING OF THE SUPERIOR STUDIES OF VETERINARY MEDICINE IN ARGENTINA OUR HISTORICAL PARADOXES

A fast one crossed by books of our history allows us to appreciate that great part of the past Argentine has turned around the cattle industry. Prevailed of precious metals that attracted the avidity of the European conquerors, these earth did not have another wealth that its feracidad. We do not have to find in them heroic epics of adventurers of the stature of Courteous or Pizarro. Who reads the preparations of Garay to undertake his founding expedition of present Buenos Aires, she will see that little she could promise to the asunceños Creoles that they accompanied it, as not outside the distribution of earth and baguales horses.

During the first centuries of existence the Silver practically lived thanks to its campaign. The abundant cattle montaraz known like wild, that until aims of vague century XVIII by Pampas, was in charge to almost satisfy the totality with the primary necessities of the population with those years. Its tallow was light source; the fat - packaged in vejigas- she was taken advantage of among other uses like culinario ingredient; their spears were exported or served to demarcate gardens; the meat was of course the main food of the diets and until it had displaced to the bread in padrenuestro of the jesuíticas Missions, also she was exported like jerked or salty meat; the emaciated head was used like seat in the farms, also the hip to which a leather piece was added to him; the leather was the ceiling or the door of a room, leaves of the clothes or the message, the ball in which a small stream was crossed, or the main product exported of our ports during many decades. Until bezoares they were sent to Europe because one recognized medicinal virtues to them, in addition to which as amulet were attributed to him here.

Our tradition intimately is bound to the animals of the field. What would be of a gaucho - nor to speak nothing else of a caudillo without the company of their faithful load, distinguished of thousand possible ways that by the variation of the color of their coat. Until the daily games they were impregnated in the constant presence of the cattle, and thus we have the races, the duck or until vulgar taba.
And nevertheless, in spite of the bovine or equinos saying and to the abundance of that allowed to annually sacrifice million animals by the single interest of the leather, almost there are registries of no veterinarians which they have acted in our means, less still in the campaign. The few of which the news is had ordered to take care of equinos urban or - as in the case of first of Buenos Aires, albéitar Margallo- Lamb until humans.
Animals everywhere, veterinarians in any side. Strange historical paradox mainly if one remembers that the art to cure animals is as old as the neolithic domesticación of the animals. From 1500 a Proto-albeiterato in Madrid already existed that examined to those who inhaled to being albéitares - old denomination of Arab origin of our profession in the kingdoms of Spain, and in 1762 began to work in France the first school of superior studies of veterinary medicine.

The situation, contradictory in appearance, stayed while the production was based mainly on the operation of roundups of raised or wild cattle. but when the rational handling of the young was advancing throughout century XIX and the wire moved the last vestiges of uneven life, one became necessary to take care of aspects that the simple experience of the field man did not reach to solve.

WHERE IS A VETERINARIAN?
The fever of wool, as the historian called Hilda Sábato to the period between 1850 and 1890 in the province of Buenos Aires, and the appearance of the system of conservation of the meat by the cold that allowed the export of congealed meats to Europe, created good part of the propitious climate for the coming of foreign veterinarians - P. Bidali and G.B. Whigham among them brought to solve the serious problems of health that appeared in our foreign reproductive cattles as they were arriving at the country without sanitary control of no species.
However, to concern veterinarians was not nothing cheap for the farmers, and is for that reason that already in 1881 the Rural Society asked for the Buenosairean authorities that were created a veterinary medicine chair, that would work within the Practical School of Agriculture that from 1872 dictated classes for young people coming from the Asylum of Orphans, in lands known like Santa Catherine, in Hills of Zamora. The order did not fall in broken coat and thus the Legislature sanctioned law of the 13 of 1881 in that the creation was had a House of Sum School and 1424 September of Veterinary medicine that would settle down together to the Practical School of Agriculture of Santa Catherine. For the best accomplishment of these aims one designated to a Commission presided over by the illustrious lawyer and ex- minister of Property of the province, Dr Mariano Demaría.
The mentioned Practical School recognized its origins in a project of 1867 of the provincial deputy Eduardo Olivera who had proposed to the Buenosairean Legislature the creation of an Agricultural Institute. Hardly a year had passed when the law was sanctioned that destined 1.500.000 pesos national currency to establish this institute. The one in charge was the Rural Society Argentina, by decree of Alsina governor, to more on purpose buy the land for the aims of education. In 1870 the Society already had acquired to Francisco of the Serna a lot located in the zone of Hills of Zamora, of 739 blocks and 7/10, with buildings and forests.

The mentioned Commission was led its assignment quickly and ordered to the retailer Guillermo F. Arning the hiring in the Old Continent of the professionals in charge to inaugurate the superior studies of agronomy and veterinary medicine in our country. For August of 1882 the delegate had finished contracting in Europe five Belgian professors - civil engineer Camilo Gillet, the engineer agronomist Gustavo André and the veterinarians Carlos Lambert, Carlos Tombeur and Desiderio Bernier- and one French - the engineer agronomist Julio Frommel- who would be the founders of the Institute. To Tombeur the direction of the School of Veterinary medicine trusted to him whereas André were named Director of the Institute. Lambert had to his position the direction of the Haras.

MEMORIES OF SANTA CATALINA
The written memory the 1 of March of 1884 by André to Demaría remembers that eighteen students registered to render entrance examination, twelve for the studies of first category that included/understood four years of duration and which they granted titles of ¨Capacidad Agrícola¨ and ¨Capacidad to exert the Veterinario¨ Art. The six rest decided on a race of two years that granted a certificate of to have made the studies required for the degree of butler. Of first they approved ten, whereas those of the second category rendered correctly in their totality. He is interesting to notice that the sixteen students who began the studies remembered the 6 of August of 1883, date of inauguration of the classes were then, and not seventeen as sometimes has affirmed. The error, that was immortalized in an allusive plate at the beginning of the Institute, comes from which in Libro de Matrículas nobody wanted to occupy the place number 13, whose numeration was not written unlike the rest, and it was decided to him to one the so many aspirings new recruit but that they did not appear to the entrance examination.
Oriented indisimuladamente towards the heirs of the landowners, because they had to be the future guardians of our wealth, the School of Agronomy and Veterinary medicine of the province of Buenos Aires in Santa Catherine counted, from 1884, with an Animal Institute Bovine against the Smallpox, first in America, that worked like an annex of the School of Veterinary medicine and that was in charge to also provide during long years of antivariólica vaccine not only to our country but to Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay.

The regime of studies was own of a boarding school, lasting the classes from first of March to November ends in that the examinations began, that extended approximately until the 20 of December. The examinations lasted 25 minutes clock in hand. As the idiomática difficulty to translate counted reference books were remarkable the students proposed to André the hiring of a French professor, vacancy that was occupied by the secretary of the director, Plandolit, that simultaneously was watchman.
The students whose notes in the partial examinations were repeatedly insufficient directly were expelled, and thus in June of 1884 five students they had to leave the boarding school, having itself the future saved dean of the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinaria of the Silver, Clodomiro Griffin, of this pain thanks to that Tombeur had in consideration that had entered a month after its companions. The professors did not have coronita in these questions either and engineer agronomists Hizette and Hambursin suffered this exigency of a high level of excellence.

The division of the courses in two categories solely quickly the courses of four years for agronomy and veterinary medicine were abolished then in 1884 disappeared the short race and had left. For that reason the students returned to be registered and many were added more getting to be 78 altogether. The Institute saw increased its pupils of exponential way and the urgent necessity of professors was evident soon after. In September of 1886 it also arrived the veterinarian received in Alfort (the most prestigious school of veterinary medicine of its time) Eugene Vermeersch and in March of the following year they arrived the French engineers L. Garola, P. Lavenir and veterinarians, Victor Even and Alexander Tribout, both also of the mentioned school of Alfort.
The Institute told on an own publication that it began to be published the 20 of August of 1886 and in that next to articles of zootécnico, veterinary and agronómico interest the news of sports were infaltables, as it were called in those years to the flat racing, deports of unusual diffusion between the well off class.

Every year festejaba the anniversary of the initiation of the courses. Each 6 of August were celebrated with a banquet that was brightened up with music in charge of some fan orchestra. The limits of festejo were clear, was necessary to consider that the train from return to Buenos Aires left to the 15,30 hours reason why, except for the boarding schools, nobody thought to extend beyond this top the joy.
Although the training material did not abound and the texts were little, we do not forget that almost the totality of the national treaties that turned on veterinary medicine had been written by simple cattle dealers, the system to consider to the students of fourth year like medical instructors having to those of the third like assistants assuming obligation to take care of the animals ill and periodically to present/display them in the hour of class to the professor and other students, was very interesting and suitable. The chair of Art To shoe included/understood practical works of preparation of horseshoes, normal and cogoverning with lead ingots. During both first years the agricultural works shared with the agronomy students. At the end of both first years the students gave an examination to obtain a diploma of Veterinary Medicine Candidate.

For aims of 1887 ten students of agronomy and three of veterinary medicine their final general examinations rendered, but the works of these did not finish here, because they had to concur in July of the following year to present/display a thesis. However the memory of this work did not dim the memorable days from the 5 to the 10 of December. The last day, Sunday, a lunch be served which it attended the Dr Demaría and the director, engineer Teodoro agronomist Alvarez (André had resigned by serious cuestionamientos to his work from the professor of Zootecnia, the French economist Eduardo Losson). It was in one of the toasts of that day that professor Even compared the figure of the lawyer president of the Directive Commission, with the one of his founding French colleague of the first two schools of veterinary medicine in the world, the one of Lyon and the one of Alfort, and thus called the Argentine Bourgelat.
When being fulfilled the stipulated term the withdrawn ones appeared to render thesis examination the 23 of 1888 July but as the time did not reach it decided that those that lacked to do fulfilled it the 6 of August indeed. In that date the delivery of diplomas also took place, concurring to the ceremony high personalities of the moment, like Aristóbulo senator of the Valley, the famous cattle dealer Martinez de Hoz and the naturalist Ladislao Holmberg. In that day they obtained its title of ¨Competente in science veterinaria¨, nótese that one had changed of art to science, the first three veterinarians received in the country: the mendocino Custodio Angel Martinez, Buenosairean Jose Maria Leonardo Agote and catamarqueño Calisto Ferreyra (the only one that catholic or protestant like the rest appears in the matriculation like free thinker and not like).
The following year the Uruguayan Heraclio Rivas, Buenosairean the Clodomiro Griffin, Arsenio Ramirez, Isidoro Acevedo Ponce, the Lincolns Villanueva and the sampedrino were added to the list Juan Nicanor Murtagh.

The obtaining of the first fruits served as incentive the provincial authorities to pay greater attention at the level of the studies that were lent in Santa Catherine. No longer one was a simple institution of average education but that who withdrew could to compare itself with professionals of university degree of Europe. For that reason the 4 of June of 1889 entered consideration of the provincial Legislative Power a project of the Executive to create a Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary medicine on the base of the Institute Agronómico and Veterinario that then worked. As the province crossed a financial crisis were impossible to make any construction in Santa Catherine, reason why its partial sale in lots was decided to obtain a rent, but also the Executive authority decided immediate transfer from the Institute to the city of the Silver elevating it to the category of Faculty by a sanctioned law the 12 of November of 1889. In that year, when finishing the courses already stopped the Institute in their function of School of Agronomy and Veterinary medicine, retaking their work in the Silver the 1 of June of 1890 like the first national faculty of these races.

THE INTERNAL DEBT
The Institute of Santa Catherine, declared ¨Lugar Historical National by decree 877 of 1961 pervive in its original site, although not forgotten, at least without receiving the visit of many of the veterinarians who obtain their titles in Buenos Aires. His estate, which it saw march past the first litters of challenging ready young people to face the prejudices of the time - which they descreían of the scientific base of the veterinary studies, is still total of the true spirit of those próceres of the profession that, with their fight to opened field, illuminated our future. How many tranqueras it let open Juan Murtagh to his colleagues after have applied before finalizing century XIX more than one hundred thousand doses of anticarbunculosa vaccine successful. How many human lives were saved thanks to the febrile activity of Joaquin Zabala in the slaughter houses, and how many positions created for the veterinarians their action in state distributions. How much it elevated the prestige of our race the microbiological studies of Federico Sívori. It is impossible to quantify our debt, but it is hour to begin to settle it. Go in these brief lines a modest tribute towards them, and want the Providence that this is the seed so that ¨hijos¨ we honor as it must be to our parents.

Published in Veterinary Medicine Advances N º 2

Source:

Osvaldo Antonio Perez Veterinary doctor, UBA Lawyer in History, USAL Professor of History, USAL to oaperez@sinectis.com.ar Association Argentina de Historia of the Veterinary medicine http://webs.sinectis.com.ar/oaperez http://www.asarhive.com.ar

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