Vetnews | Julie 2024 22 « BACK TO CONTENTS “A god touched my sheep”: understanding veterinary practices in ancient Mesopotamia Silvia Nicolás-Alonso1, Alfonso Vives-Cuesta2 1Biblical and Oriental Institute of León, Cistierna, Spain. 2Classical Philology Department (University of Valladolid), Valladolid, Spain Located near the domestication centres of many of our farm animals, Mesopotamia played an important role in the reception and dissemination of a new form of human-animal relationship. Records on veterinary medicine practised in this early period are scarce and come mainly from artistic representations and textual sources. Regarding the latter, in addition to medical texts, which must be carefully contextualized as they are focused on humans, to gather more accurate information about these practices, it is necessary to broaden our horizon of study to include other texts not traditionally associated with veterinary medicine, such as lexical lists and texts of a legal, administrative or magical-religious nature. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we present an investigation of the veterinary practices recorded in various Sumero-Akkadian sources of the III-I millennium B.C. First, the concept of disease is studied in relation to animal health in the anthropology of both cultures. Then, following the Mesopotamian scheme of natural classification as the basis of their (proto-) science, a study of the rich pharmacopoeia from lexical lists (ur5-ra = hubullum), as well as from pharmacological handbooks (Uruanna = maštakal; Šammu šikinšu), is presented. Finally, practices of veterinary interest derived from the management of animals and not included in the Mesopotamian healing canon are analyzed. Mesopotamian medicine is based on the religious interpretation of pathological phenomena and this is common to humans and animals. Concern for livestock welfare translates into the expert management of each species with highly specialized keepers, whose practices and strategies to control animal health and avoid disease should not be overlooked. Although more research is still needed to explore aspects related both to animal health and welfare, studies such as this one, are a valuable source that allows us to develop a clearer vision of the veterinary medicine practices in these early cultures. The waxing and waning course of canine babesiosis research in South Africa over the past 140 years Johan P Schoeman University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Canine babesiosis has captured the imagination of South African clinicians for decades. Dr J Cartwright-Reed, a human doctor, forwarded the “diseased lungs” of a pointer dog that was preserved in “Cape brandy” to the Veterinary Department of the Cape Colony in 1893. He alluded to an epidemic disease of a “fatal character” amongst dogs in a village in the Eastern Cape. Duncan Hutcheon, Colonial Veterinary Surgeon, described the clinical manifestations of the disease as a “disorder of the blood” and called it malignant jaundice or bilious fever of the dog. The prescience of these observations has proven itself over the decades to come. Over the next 140 years, the research interest in canine babesiosis has waxed and waned. Theiler performed a series of experiments on dogs in 1903, by infecting them with the parasite. He made observations regarding the immunity that develops following infection. Between 1910 and 1930, research by Meyer and Parkin was concerned with the treatment of the disorder. During the 1950s, Malherbe described the various atypical manifestations and in the 1960s he wrote a series of articles on the biochemical disorders in this disease. In the 1970s disseminated intravascular coagulation was described as a complication. During the late 1980s, a babesiosis study group was founded at the Faculty of Veterinary Science of the University of Pretoria. This group was one of the reasons for a new research impetus - the bloodgas perturbations, several metabolic, endocrine, coagulation, renal and inflammatory changes were described. In the early 2000s, the limitations of studies in naturally infected dogs became increasingly apparent. Then in 2020, insights were obtained from experimentally infected dogs that were followed from the point of infection, through the development of parasitaemia, fever and ultimately anaemia in which the cytokine, endocrine and genomic responses and further “disorders of the blood” were described. v Events I WVAC 2024
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