From the Marshall plan to present day prosperity: veterinary medicine in The Netherlands 1945-2000.

Abstract

For a long time,veterinarians used to do their work rather inconspicuously.The inner circle of the veterinary world was virtually unknown to the public. However, due to the recent outbreaks of BSE and swine fever and the changing human-animal relationships, public attention is increasingly being focused on veterinary medicine.The public interest in the profession has also grown due to the increasingly important role that animals play in present-day western society (Fogle,1999).Along with this growing public interest in veterinary medicine, the concern for the societal responsibilities, position and image of veterinarians has also increased. Throughout the past two decades, the veterinary profession has become the subject of study for several other disciplines (Lawrence,1991; Swabe,1999).Inevitably,these studies also focus on the long-term development of veterinary sciences, the veterinary profession and policy, veterinary traditions, and thus also the history of veterinary medicine. As an integral part of the history of sciences, veterinary medicine has thus far only received limited attention.Veterinary history studies have predominantly focused on institutional history and biographies (Brumme, 1997; Brumme and Schaffer, 1993), while these were often written to provide a functionalist account of veterinary professionalisation. Recently, more attention has been paid to the social and political history of veterinary medicine (Brumme and von Mickwitz, 1997; Fisher, 1998; Schaffer, 1998). In this paper, the development of Dutch veterinary medicine in the second half of the twentieth century will be explored. During this period, the Netherlands developed to a modern welfare state.The history of veterinary medicine will be examined within that societal context.The issues of post-war reconstruction, restoration and growth of livestock production, veterinary public health, differentiation and specialisation, faculty and education, and feminisation of the profession will be dealt with respectively. Post-war reconstruction