This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book breaks new ground by situating
animals and their diseases at the very heart of modern medicine. In demonstrating their
historical significance as subjects and shapers of medicine it offers important insights into
past animal lives and reveals that what we think of as 'human' medicine was in fact deeply
zoological. Each chapter analyses an important episode in which animals changed and were
changed by medicine. Ranging across the animal inhabitants of Britain's zoos sick sheep on
Scottish farms unproductive livestock in developing countries and the tapeworms of California
and Beirut they illuminate the multi-species dimensions of modern medicine and its rich
historical connections with biology zoology agriculture and veterinary medicine. The modern
movement for One Health - whose history is also analyzed - is therefore revealed as just the
latest attempt to improve health by working across species and disciplines. This book will
appeal to historians of animals science and medicine to those involved in the promotion and
practice of One Health today.
