Vet Check

Human history cannot be separated from animal life. We have hunted them, ridden them, feasted upon their flesh, worn their hides, worshipped them, tamed them, patted them, culled them, experimented with them, altered their environments, and sent them into space. Animals exist at once within, beyond, and beneath our domain. The callousness with which society treats them is allayed only (and marginally) by our decision to heal them.

Philipp Schott begins his survey of the “veterinary arts” with pictorial evidence of our brutality toward animals: nineteenth-century paintings of mad-eyed horses in the fray of the Napoleonic Wars. The accurate depiction of their fearful desperation is a sign, he says, that humanity’s “Circle of Concern” was finally expanding to include an acknowledgement of their welfare. “Awareness” is probably a more accurate word than “concern,” even if it was a time of great progress in the establishment of animal rights. After all, horses were...