Stuff You Should Know - The Largely Equine History of Veterinary Medicine

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Vets have been around for a long time, but mainly to care for horses. When horse travel went away, guess who saved the profession? Dogs!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace.

I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Was that a horse or a goat? Take your pick, buddy. Well, the working title for this one is History of Veterinary Medicine, or when did people stop only caring about horses and cows when it comes to animals? The answer to that question is pretty recently, actually. And I should just say livestock. Sure. Just a short one, that 18-word title.

To 16 words. Livestock, livestock's a great word. And then mast is also one of my favorite words for the kind of earthy hominess it has to it. Mast, the collection of edible nuts that pigs and squirrels live off of. Yeah, mast, acorns, chestnuts, all that stuff is under the umbrella of mast, don't you? Isn't it like livestock? Livestock, mast, measuring things by the foot, wearing like a cloth hat. It all just kind of has that same vibe going on, and I love it all. Yeah, because I can picture a stinker squirrel just like chewing and going, hey, you want to go get some mast? We're running low on mast. Let's get some more mast guys. After this mast and the other mast, we've only got two masts left.

All right, Livia did a great job because when I asked for an article about veterinary medicine, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It was like what I really want is like the history of veterinary medicine, not one of those old kind of articles where it's like to become a vet, you should, I mean, there's a little bit of that at the very end, but I found this endlessly fascinating to see where we were and where we are now. Yeah, it's kind of like the history of dentistry episodes you dialed up a year or so ago. That's right. Look at that. So yeah, you have a thing with history of medical fields, apparently. I guess so. So we're talking about vets, specifically the history of veterinary medicine. And we don't exactly know when it starts. Our first unambiguous

evidence that people were caring medically for animals comes about 41-ish, 100 years ago in the Mesopotamian city of Lagash, where somebody named Erlega Ladina was mentioned as somebody who was an expert in healing animals, I guess scrawled on a bathroom wall somewhere in Lagash. Sure. But we presume that the people were caring for animals thousands of years before that, because we domesticated animals thousands of years before that. And just by the very virtue of us depending on those animals, somebody along the way figured out, it's kind of important to keep these animals healthy and happy. And we need to figure out tips and techniques for doing that. And that was really the birth of veterinary medicine.

Yeah. I mean, their lives depended on this livestock, livestock. Mast. And so, of course, they wanted to keep these things alive so they could use them in all the ways that they were used. And of course, we're talking about at the time, like very rudimentary stuff like, hey, what should we feed them? And then let's watch, and are they thriving? So let's either watch this feed them more of that or less of this. So in other words, let's work on their diet. Let's see if we can get that right. Let's see what kind of like herbs and fruits and roots and things like that we could use to try and heal them. There is the actual word veterinarian, which is an English term based on the Latin

verb the hiri, V-E-H-E-R-I, which is to draw as in like, you know, drawing a horse or something like that. Like a horse drawing a wagon. Yeah. Because you could win an art scholarship if you could draw that parrot, right? Horses were the one thing that I could draw because I had a book once that taught me how to draw horses. So you start with three. Is that a book or a movie or something? I don't know. It sounds like something, doesn't it? So is that what it is? Okay. So you start with a big circle and then you make a slightly less big circle a little to the left of that. And then a little up and to the left above that slightly less big circle. You do a smaller circle and then you've got the rump, the front and the head of the horse and you just start filling lines

in from there. And believe me, it works. Connect the dots. Yeah. It really works really well. Can you still draw a horse? I haven't tried in a really long time, but... Will you try and draw a horse and put that on your Instagram? I will. Please. I will. By Josh, age 46. Oh, that's funny. And then look, you know, you can look back on that when you're 56 and have all those fond memories. Like, I was so terrible at drawing horses. You can pull it out and say, look what you did when you were 46. So we're going to get to the US, but all of this action right now in terms of caring for cattle and horses and sheep and things is immobile or is in Europe.

And immobile Europe, you might, you know, have a status symbol animal like, hey, I'm a falconer or something. Check out this bad boy or look at these regal greyhounds. So they would care, in that case, very specifically, would care for what we might think of as a pet, but that was not the common thing. And pets, as far as veterinary care, didn't come around so much, much later. No, but this does support part of a longstanding tradition that exists still today, that the well off to the uber wealthy are responsible for funding veterinary practices. Yeah. You know, that's true. Yeah. And in Great Britain, in the United States, the ideas were that if you were responsible for putting shoes on a horse, if you were a farrier,

you also, more often, I think, than putting shoes on a horse back then you would carve their toenails. Sure. Or their hooves, I guess, is another way to put it. Their toenails. If you want to get technical. But there's a certain way you can carve them to make them faster, to make them more stable, to make sure their feet aren't aching, that kind of thing. And that kind of evolved into the earliest, I guess, in the U.S. and Great Britain, practitioners of horse medical care. If you went to see the farrier, he could probably help you with your horse, especially if you needed your horse's junk cut off. Yeah. That's one of the surgeries a farrier could perform for you. You could also go to a cow leech, which is just kind

of what you think. It's someone who takes care of hows. I guess they would use leaching methods and things, but it was someone who specialized in dealing with your sick cow. And again, the farriers and the cow leeches did this stuff because they were just around them all the time. So it makes sense if you're shoeing a horse, you have more maybe an intuitive sense of how to help a horse. You know what I'm saying? Right. Yeah. And so you would basically learn this as an apprentice, which means that some good ideas were passed along, some really bad ideas were passed along. There wasn't any book learning about caring for animals at the time. And there wasn't a lot of specialization outside of farriers. And I guess aside from,

I get the impression that cows were getting some side attention here, but for the most part, it was horse, horse, horse. Of course. That was like the driving force of the establishment of veterinary medicine as an actual specialist field. Yeah, big time. And you might not be surprised or you may be surprised to learn that it sort of not quite lockstep, but it sort of progressed. It feels like just behind medicine on humans, like as we started dissecting humans, they started dissecting horses. And it just sort of makes sense. It's like, these are other living mammals. And if we learn how to study bones and muscles and organs of people, then we can certainly learn how to do that on this horse. Right. A sea change book came along in 1610 by,

would that be Gervais or Gervaisa? I'm going with Gervais. Okay, Gervais Markham. That's a new hotel name, by the way. Gervais Markham. Yeah. Oh boy, I'd stay there. And I love how I like on the nose. No, no, no. The fake name you used to check into a hotel, not the name of a hotel. That sounds like a hotel chain during the January break. That sounds like a hotel chain. Gervais Markham. It sounds more like a white heel law firm. All right, maybe. Is that the right term? White heel? I don't know. Well-heeled. Well-heeled. White color. No, I can't remember. White hot, a white hot law firm? Yeah. Now, I get you now. No, that's a great hotel name to check in under, Gervais Markham. Gotcha, gotcha. And this was back when book

titles were more of a description of what's in the book rather than, and they still try and get to that, like we learned that when we titled our own book, but they were really on the nose back then. And this was called Markham's masterpiece, spelled P-E-E-C-E, containing all knowledge belonging to Smith, Farrier, or horse leech, touching on curing all diseases in horses. And I'm not joking when I said this thing was a big deal. It was the go-to book for 200 plus years. They were printing this thing. 200 years. Imagine if our book was printed for the next 200 years. This would essentially be like the horse caring for Bible is what it was. The problem is, is again, a lot of those bad ideas got put into this book too and spread,

like using leeches for bloodletting, for things like purging, which I think is exactly what it sounds like. Making your horse vomit? Yeah, exactly. Using herbal remedies, some of which may or may not have worked. It's not like we're saying like, nope, modern veterinary medicine is the only possible way to care for an animal. Like, I'm sure a lot of these folk remedies did actually work just from people trying them over and over again, finding this is pretty effective. But there was also a lot of bunk in there too. Yet, these books were good enough that for 200 years, they were used to care for horses. I just want to make sure that we got that point across. Should we take a break or wait? Let's take a break, Chuck. I'm getting a little

riled up. All right, let's take a break. Let's settle down. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw,

inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money you

took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace

because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Okay, Chuck, you talked about a seed change. You want to talk about a real seed change? Yeah. I got one right here. There's a guy named Claude Borgelot. He was a writing academy instructor. Actually, the guy who ran the writing academy in Lyon, France back in the 1760s. And he said,

you know what, there's not a lot of like formal science-based education in caring for horses. And I think that's problematic. So I'm going to write a little book in 1750 talking about how to care for horses. But also, I'm going to kind of like go to Louis the 15th and his court and say, guys, this is really actually very important. Horses have an enormous impact on our lives. And I really think that we should start setting up horse veterinary schools. And Louis the 15th said, okay, I'm with you, man. Let's try it. Yeah. He said, you want to keep hunting foxes? King Louis said, sure. And he said, well, your horses aren't doing so hot. And there's no school to make them feel better. So why don't you fund this? And they funded it, I believe,

sort of temporarily at first. And I guess it proved to be, you know, at least successful enough to really put it on the books for good. I think what really changed things was something came along called The Render Pest, which totally sounds like some folk horror movie, Ari Aster thing. Right. But The Render Pest was the cattle plague. And it hit Europe in a big, big way. And we're talking to the tune of about 200 million cattle dying over the course of, what is that, like 50 something years? In Europe alone. Yeah, in Europe. So that really made King Louis sit up and take notice. So that short term grant became permanent state support. And this bourgeois guy was, he was a really big deal because he started a couple of

schools. And it is what these schools did. But it was also these schools then sprouting other schools and the people that he instructed, then going on and teaching others. It was really just the beginning of a movement, which was vet school. And it was good that they started that, that that was kind of like the ground zero for veterinary medicine, because they seemed to actually know what they were talking about. They use science-based, science-backed best practices. They, it wasn't just a lot of hokum, you know, like they actually said, does this actually work? Let's test it out. And so it did spread. I think at first to Vienna in 1767, about six years after the Lyon school was set up, London 1791, Berlin 1792. And then, you know, for those of us in America,

you're like, and America in, well, it wasn't about a little less than 100 years later before America really started to get serious about veterinary medicine. Yeah, it was almost as if the American colonists set things up and they were like, all right, we're going to kind of do things like they were done 100 years ago in Europe, where we came from, that like we, you know, they cared about horses and cattle, just in the same way that, you know, as far as depending on them for all the things that livestock provided. But that was not, it was just way less advanced. They were still doing the let's feed them this and see what happens. And again, this is a new country. So they were, there was a bit of a learning curve, I think, as far as climate and

like what's available to eat and stuff like that. But it wasn't so different that they had to kind of go back 100 years, I don't think. They were still using Gervais Markham's book. Though they were actually. They definitely were. Yeah, the thing I saw it described as so in the United States in particular, it was just basically taken for granted that if you own a horse or you own livestock, you, the horse owner, the farmer has the knowledge to care for and keep those, those animals healthy. That that it's your responsibility that it was just viewed as, you know, veterinary medicine was just viewed as another chore around the farm. It was not something that you needed book learning for. You didn't need some pencil neck from the city to come

tell you how to do it right. It was just up to the farmer, the horse owner to care for their animal. Yeah, and I've got something kind of staggering here that Livia dug up that horses, of course, here we go again. Man, that's so hard to not say. Horses were the main animal that everyone was concerned with. But there was an analysis of advertisements for veterinary remedies found in Tennessee newspapers from 1849 to 1900 and found that more than half were for horses. And then following an order were cows, chickens, hogs and sheep. And what's astounding to me is that means that someone did an analysis of veterinary remedy advertisements in Tennessee newspapers from 1849 to 1900. Yeah, you got me with that. I was going to be like,

so you found that astounding. Who did that? I really pulled it out at the end. Some people who had too much funding. Do you think Livia did it? No, I saw the paper and I don't remember who wrote it. Oh man, I was so hoping she'd be like, guys, I went over and above this time. It was me. So the thing that, oh, what was his name, Claude Bourgelot, the guy who founded the Lyon Veterinary Academy that kind of spawned so many others, the thing that he warned Louis the 15th about like, hey, man, you really depend on horses a lot. We need to keep them safe. That kind of came in horse bit America in the rear end because by the 1870s, there was a horse plague, kind of like cattle render pests,

which by the way, Chuck, I just want to say this. Do you know render pest is one of two diseases considered eradicated from earth, the other being smallpox? Oh, really? Yeah. It's almost kind of like how smallpox devastated humanity. Render pest devastated cattle for a very, very long time. And so we just said, we're done with this. And so in 2011, it was declared eradicated. They should decide that about all disease. I agree. They're like, we're still making our mind up about the other ones. We're done with this one. Let's get rid of it. Okay. So there was a horse plague that came around at least some sort of epidemic that really kind of spread throughout of the United States. And it showed America like, hey, you guys really depend on horses because

the horses all called in sick to work. They did. And this is a time when there was, I think what they responded with was, hey, we need to care for our horses, but it wasn't necessarily medical care still. It was, you know, again, let's see if we can get their diet better. Maybe if these horses are really sick, we should clean their stables out more. Maybe we should, you know, change their blankets out and give them clean blankets, things like that. But it still wasn't, and you know, they had sort of the home remedies and stuff they were still doing. But it still wasn't this, I guess, what would have been at the time advanced medical veterinary care happening? No. And as a result, because they hadn't really figured this out yet, those horses that were sick,

the great fire of Boston in 1872 burned as badly as it did because the fire department basically had to show up on foot. There weren't any horses available. They were all sick. And also from that outbreak in the 1870s, the ASPCA developed and was actually given policing powers in New York City because they would go around and inspect horses out on the street to see if they were sick. Because if you were an owner and you were making your horsework sick, you were in big trouble, especially with the ASPCA. Because you could make other horses sick or you were just doing the wrong thing? Both. Okay. Yeah. That's good to know. And again, this is in America, they were lagging behind such that they were still using like, you know, charms and rituals and spells

and things and some kind of rural parts of America at first. It's kind of funny to think about, but this is what it looked like at the time. Chuck, tell them how to cure bots, which is a parasitic fly infection that horses can get. Well, if you're talking about the one from the 1820 book, this is from a healer, I guess a horse healer in Pennsylvania and bots is that parasitic infection. Right. Here's what you would do. I know why you're making me read this. You would quote, stroke the horse down with a hand three times, so far so good. Lead it about three times, holding its head toward the sun, saying, the holy one saith, Joseph passed over a field, and there he found three small worms, the one being black, another being brown, and the third

being red, thou shalt die and be dead. Can you imagine passing your neighbor while they were doing this? Wouldn't you just be like, we need to get locks for our doors? Yeah, they just stroke that horse down three times. Yeah. So moving on, Chuck. Finally, in the United States, medicine itself wasn't really professionalized until the 1840s, but around the same time, kind of like you were saying, and I think it was Great Britain, where the anatomists and the veterinarians started kind of working side by side or co-evolving. A similar thing happened in the United States. Again, just 100 years later, so weird that it took that long. And then finally, it was in large part thanks to the Civil War, too, that gave people a great appreciation

of the importance of the horse and how much we needed to care for him. The thing is, we're still totally focused on the horse, not just in the United States, but around the world. If you were a veterinarian, all you do is horses, maybe cows, maybe chickens, if you have a huge gambling problem and are in debt. Or sheep. But that's about it. Yeah. But really, the big focus is on horses. Still just horses, guys. I promise we're gonna get to doggies and kitties at some point. The last two minutes. A big step forward was in 1863, there were some veterinary surgeons from seven different states who met in New York City and said, had some drinks and said, have you seen what's going on out there in the country? They're stroking horses down and they're

doing witch's spells. And it's just the Stone Age. We need to get it together. And so they said, bully to that. And they established the US Veterinary Medical Association, which would become the American Veterinary Medical Association, and said, you know what we should do? We'll let anyone in who says they are a practicing veterinarian, or even a student that has at least three years experience, and they could get in if they can practice, if they could pass an oral exam, like that you got good teeth. That's what I actually thought when I first read that, by the way. Oh, really? For two seconds, I was like, what does that gotta do with that? Oh, what a dummy. If they passed an oral exam and could provide documentation, or even just testimonials,

that said, you know, these are my qualifications. Plus, they had to walk around the room with a stack of books on their heads without dumping them over. That's right. Very important work. And Josiah H. Stickney was a graduate of Harvard Medical School, was the very first president of the, I guess at the time, the USVMA. And that's legit, you know, Harvard Medical School. You're right there in step with medical doctors at the time. Right. So that became the American Veterinary Medical Association, which is still around today. And this was the 1860s, right? 1863, yeah. And then Congress even said, hey, get this, we want to get in on the act. If you are a,

if you're in the cavalry, you have to have at least one farrier in a regiment. And that farrier, if you're going to take care of horses, you have to have a degree from a veterinary college. We're going to start taking this seriously from now on, everybody. Okay. No more messing around. No more hexcraft or anything like that. We're done with that. We're going to get into science now. Yeah. Quit stroking down that horse and go to school. A lot of veterinary institutions sprang out from this. And these were for-profit places. The quality was very uneven. He's still having about that. The quality was very uneven at these schools. And most of them were in big cities, of course, still focusing on those horses. But then something weird happened.

The automobile came along. Horses were kind of kicked to the curb, literally. And off the streets. And all of a sudden, a lot of these veterinary schools closed up shop. They're like, well, that's it. That's our practice. What else is there to do? And by the end of the 1920s, they were all but gone. Yes. But there was an astounding stroke of good luck for the veterinarians who were around at the time. Okay. Yeah. And that is that up to that point, like if you treated anything but horses, you were on a descending hierarchy, kind of like I was talking about before. And one thing you just did not do was treat dogs. If you're a veterinarian, you did not treat dogs. And veterinarians were totally fine with that

until the horse kind of lost its importance like you were talking about. And so veterinarians kind of started to look around. And they realized that in Great Britain, there was a woman named Maria Dickon who had established the people's dispensary for sick animals of the poor. Amazing. Yes. Free treatment to any sick animals anybody brought in. It was a real hit among the poor and cheapskate pet owners at the time. And they were doing it without any veterinary training whatsoever. They were just using trial and error. And just from that kind of experience, they actually got really good at treating dogs. And so veterinarians said, well, we don't have horses to practice on anymore. We're going to take over dogs and we're going to go

after the PDSA and basically make them work with us. All right. I feel like that's a great the little cliffhanger there. We're finally at doggies. We're still not at kitties yet, everybody. Believe it or not, they took even a little bit longer. But we'll get to that right after this. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost

experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the

Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had

been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeill. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. All right, so where we left off was you introduce a woman named Maria Dickon who

did great work kind of founding the idea of, what do you call them? Dispensaries? No, like a free animal clinic. Yeah, free clinic for animals. If you like, there's a word that I can't land on. It's free clinic. No, that's not it. But that is it. So it's fine. A laboratory? No, she did great work. I think they had a patient load at one point. Infirmary? No. Okay, well then I'm out of ideas, sorry. Of over 400,000 treatments per year. That's a lot. That's a lot. But like you said, the people that studied in school to be vets, all of a sudden found their coffers empty because all the horses were just standing around, doing nothing now. And a very wealthy woman left 50,000 pounds to the PDSA and the Royal College

of Veterinary Surgeons said, well, wait a minute, we should have some of that money because you're giving all this money to this place that's not even accredited with doctors. And that's what kind of got them together. And they started hiring doctors either kind of permanently as full-time staff or farming out their cases to these professional doctors. Right. And so veterinary medicine kind of transitioned at the same time that people in the West and Great Britain and in the United States as well were starting to kind of change how they viewed dogs, like their dogs were brought in from the outside, they became members of the family. And so as such, people were willing to spend money on their medical treatment

and they would go to medical professionals and the veterinary practitioners were waiting there with open arms and bills in hand. That's right. So we move on to our second hero of the story. If you're a cat person, you need to know this man's name. And it was Louis or Louis. Do you know which one? Let's go with Louis. Louis? No, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I realize now it's got to be Louis. It is Louis because his name is Louis Kamuti. That's right. Louis J. Kamuti was a veterinary specialist in New York City. And Louis Kamuti said, you know what, a cat saved my life when I was a kid. There was a house fire and I guess this cat went over to him and went fire and woke Kamuti up. And this is his story. And he said, so you know what I'm going to do?

I am going to dedicate my life to caring for the cats of the greater New York area. And everyone went, you mean cats? You mean those things we kick off the sidewalk? Because they're annoying us? And he went, cats, the thing that saved my life. Right. And he actually, his daughter credited him with elevating cats to the status they enjoy now. Again, it's like a beloved member of the family. I love it. Before, if you kept cats around, it was probably because you had a rat problem. The cats provided a function. They were like, working animals in a lot of ways and all of a sudden they're pets. And he wrote a book called All My Patients Are Under the Bed. That's so darn cute. It is super cute. So Louis Kamuti,

second hero. And then there's another hero that comes up in a second. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but I'm going to give everybody your name. Her name is Lila Miller. And she is known as the mother of shelter medicine. And thanks to her in the 1970s and people working in the decades leading up to that, we went from the wholesale slaughter of dogs and cats, unwanted dogs and cats to essentially no-kill shelters that killed just a tiny fraction, euthanized a tiny fraction of the dogs and cats that come in to their doors. Shelter. That was the word I was looking for. No. But it wasn't quite right. Right. No. An infirmary works better. A clinic works better. Laboratory works better than

shelter. All of them work better. Yeah. Sometimes you're looking for the wrong word, you know? Yeah, I guess so. You just got to own it. Yeah. So we don't have to get too in depth here, but suffice to say, like well into the 1970s, the way we got rid of stray dogs and stray cats was reprehensible and terrible. I have to say one thing though. I agree. We don't need to get into it, but there were, so you know how like there's just like, it's literally open season on some animals that there's too much of still today. They call them cullings or whatever. It was like that in the cities, but with dogs and cats. Yeah. But it makes you think like, okay, well everybody back then was super heartless. Not true. There were sociopathic sickos who would become those

people who like killed their quota. Oh my gosh. And there weren't quotas by the way, but they would round these dogs and cats up and carry them off in the wagon. Those wagons would be frequently attacked and the drivers like beaten and the cats and dogs inside freed by just average residents in a city when they saw these wagons go past. Wow. Even back then. So there were like, I think most people still felt about you know, animals like dogs and cats like we do today. Just they didn't keep them in their house, but they still saw them as these living sentient beings that are worthwhile and shouldn't just be you know, murdered for no good reason by some, the local sicko. Totally. Wow. Yeah. All right.

So back to Lila Miller. I'm glad you said that because that's a pretty good factoid. I'm not, I'm not for taking matters in your own hands and like street violence, but I don't know. In that case, free the dogs. And I'm glad you said that because I couldn't tell if you were bored with my story or not. No, not at all. It reminds me of a t-shirt Emily has that's a very popular shirt says be kind to animals or I'll kill you. Nice. That's a great t-shirt. So Lila Miller, she was one of the very first African-American woman to graduate from Cornell's Veterinary College. She was the one, like you said, she came along said we can do better at the time, even if you know, I mean, I guess they were mostly kill shelters at the time. But even if maybe you were

one of the few that wasn't, it was still probably like a warehouse that didn't have great care for animals. It just was not like what it is today. And we have Lila Miller to thank for that. Yeah, she came up with protocols. Yeah, for sure. She like she basically came into the field and said, this is all low hanging fruit. We're doing basically nothing to help improve the lot of these animals. So let's start doing things like setting up adoption programs, making sure they get vaccinated, making sure they get spayed and neutered. That was a fairly recent thing from the 60s or the 70s, maybe. Oh, no, I'm sorry. It started in the 30s, but culturally it wasn't a really big thing until the 60s or the 70s, thanks to people like Lila

Miller and Bob Barker, no joke. And as a result, because of these protocols that she came up with and just the complete change in attitude she brought to animal shelters, the rates of euthanasia just plummeted in cities around the country. If you want to be grossed out, go look at euthanasia rates of cities like Los Angeles or New York or Boston in 1960. It's just mind boggling. And now it's down to just a small fraction of what it used to be because so many of those dogs are adopted out because of these change of protocols, thanks to Lila Miller and others like her. Yeah. And I mean, just so much has changed since then as the dog and cat population has grown. And even more and more pets have come inside. I mean, you think like, yeah, people started

having pets a while ago and it's been fairly static. But get this stat, between 88 and 2017, the number of pet dogs in the US grew by 50%. And by 2018, almost two thirds of household pets owned at least or households owned at least one pet. And those pets sometimes had pets. And just the, you know, I, you and I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I'm a little bit older, but I even remember being a kid and like very shamefully, I mean, we didn't live in the country, but we lived, you know, we lived in the woods on a couple of acres in suburban Atlanta. And like, my parents grew up in, in not rural Tennessee, but, you know, they didn't grow up in big cities in the 1940s and 50s. So like, I, we didn't take our animals to the vet. Like we had cats that came

and went, they weren't inside. We had dogs that were out in an outdoor. And that's not to say, like, you know, if people have a very nice outdoor enclosure for their dog and that works for them, and the dog is safe, that's a personal choice. I think all dogs should be in bed with you, personally. But I'm not going to like, I'm not shaming people that might have an outdoor dog or cat as long as they're really, really cared for. It's not what I do. But back then, like, our animals never came inside. If a cat happened to run inside, it was like, get them out of here. And I wasn't saying that. I was like, oh, the cat's inside, the cat's inside. But like, the, the notion of, and this was like, even veterinary care, like if they really,

really, really needed something, our animals would go to the vet. And this is like, the shameful admission. This isn't, I'm not trying to like out my family, but this is kind of how it was, is what I'm saying. And, but the notion of taking your animals in once a year for a checkup was just people didn't do that kind of thing back then. No, it's a really relatively new thing. And it's evolved in lockstep with the amount of money that the middle class and upwards were willing to pay to take care of their pets. And the amount of pets. That's part of it too. And also, I believe that veterinarians have come up with new and amazing ways to, to bill you that you can spend money on your pets. Oh, God bless them. We'd spend a lot of money there. For sure.

And then also, there's been a lot more specialization as a result. So you don't have to go to the same vet for your dogs, you know, rabies shot and to treat their, you know, tumor or something like that. Like there's, there's pet oncologists, neurologists, epidemiologists. It's, it's really something. But because veterinarians, they don't learn essentially as a profession. They went from being completely with all their eggs in the horse basket to totally abandoning the horse and putting it all in the pet basket. And as a result, there's a real shortage of rural veterinarians who are large animal vets that know how to work on a horse that, that know how to work on a cow. And I, I'm guessing that that's going to be something that will have to be addressed eventually.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's really amazing how things have changed in the past, like, you know, 30, 40 years in the United States. And I want to shout out my vet. Can I do that? Yes. Well, I'm going to shout out Abendale Veterinary Hospital, because they're great. We followed our Dr. Stacey Stacey, is her name. That's an awesome name. When she left our old vet to go to a new practice, we followed her there because she's so great. So big ups to Dr. Stacey and Dr. Graf and Michelle and Kim and Leona and Kat and Abby and Jordan and Jennifer and Carrie and everyone else who helps out there. They're awesome. And I just, you know, more and more people are becoming, and you know, we should mention another reason that there's more veterinary

care is more people are interested in becoming vets. That job has really exploded over the last 20 or 30 years. Yeah, for sure. It's good work. I guess I'll show it out. Mo's vet, we're actually torn right now because Mo's vet left Dr. Janosco, who's awesome. She went to another practice, but we love the practice that Mo's at so much. We're like hemming and hauling about what to do. That's tough. See, we were ready to leave. We were getting a little frustrated with other parts of the old practice. So when Dr. Stacey left, we were like, oh, great, this is perfect. That's awesome. That's a tough decision for you. It is. The compromise we came up with, we're just going to get, we're going to double up on everything that Mo gets done.

Just go to both. Yeah, one right after the other. Oh man, double in your vet, Bill. I love it. I have a little Mo anecdote if you don't mind me sharing. I would love to hear about little Mo-Mo. So Yumi told me just this morning that Mo has a new, so you said dogs should sleep in bed with you. Mo definitely sleeps in bed with us. And Mo's developed a new habit where Yumi will be spooning Mo. And Mo will decide that she wants to get on the other side now, but rather than just get up and crawl over Yumi and get on the other side, she wants Yumi to spoon her, but on the other side. So she'll tap Yumi until she wakes up. To flip. Yeah, and gets that she needs to roll over now because Mo wants to spoon on this. Oh boy, it's the best. Mo runs us for sure. Well, you know,

at least somebody's in charge. That's right. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about veterinarians, go get friendly with a veterinarian. They'll tell you what you want to know. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. All right. So I can't put it off any longer. We're going to go through some of the favorite tangents of 2022 from Ian Bowers of Sandusky, Ohio. Ian put together our tangents and non-sequiturs list of 2021. And we said, Hey, if you want to keep doing this, we'll read it. And so Ian said, great. So here we go. I'm going to go through these pretty quick, but these are these are a fun walk down memory lane for us because we forget these jokes all the time. The mystery of the

Toy and Be Tiles, Josh's love of the Alfred Hitchcock presents the three detectives books. The mystery of Cole episode, stainless steel pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics and how you still haven't seen them. Yeah, that one's popped up a few times. What are land acknowledgments from May 10th? A Beastie Boys dad joke leads Chuck and Josh to reciting their favorite Beastie Boys line. And Chuck reveals he accidentally taught his daughter an inappropriate Beastie Boys lyric when she was too young. Did I tell you off the air? No, I don't believe you did. All right. So we're going to take a short break and I'll let you know right now. And then we'll be back in one second. Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, that was Josh's

literal reaction to what I just told them. I'm so sorry, everybody. What a tease. I can't tell everybody. Sorry. Oh, interestingly, Cats Invasive Species, a long discussion right at the top of Josh and Chuck's favorite newspaper cartoon strips. Sure. Of course. May 31st, the scintillating world of interest rates, discussion of the movie The Green Knight, Lee and Josh and Chuck agreeing that A24 has a flawless streak of movie releases. Rock and we're going to go see the whale in the theater soon and I don't want to know anything about it other than A24 released it. Talk to me after you see it. June 7th, Freedom of the Press, a very intricate descriptive three minute discussion of how Josh and Chuck would ride a horse over a cliff. I remember this one wearing individual

parachutes. I remember that too. We landed safely if I remember correctly. We did. I like that one. That bugs some people though. Let me see July 5th, ultra process foods, Josh eating hot wings while wearing finger condoms and the director Chuck worked for, he would eat Cheetos wearing surgical gloves as a bit. That was Tom Schiller. Supernovae, July 19th, discussion of which Britpop bands are cool and which ones weren't. Planet Sterilizing Event should be our Britpop album name is what I said and you said Zombie Star is the name of our Britpop band. Those two still work really well. I agree. Silly String, Josh brings up a video of a dog that got into a gorilla enclosure at a zoo. Oh yeah, that poor dog, I remember that. Side note, one of Josh's

looser episodes, very amusing. Okay, well was it again Silly String? Yeah. I can't believe I didn't take Silly String seriously. Short stuff, the Burner Street hoax, Chuck's daughter's love of the songs, girls just want to have fun and her brief only girls want to have fun and boys do not. That's still ongoing by the way. Is it really? Yeah, September 6th about Mallory and Mount Everest. Oh, not a tangent but Chuck casually mentioned the rope trauma. Oh yeah. Josh passed it without asking what happened to Chuck's dismay. At that point, Chuck refused. Chuck, he should say, became a big baby and refused to tell the story of what happened despite Josh asking repeatedly, Chuck said, I'll take it to his grave. Classic S.Y.S. came on that. Had a license place work,

Chuck's incredulity, sorry, that Josh didn't know what Seraph about Sans Seraph. He should say Chuck was a big jerk about the fact that Josh didn't know that. That was the one you apologized about later, right? I did. I felt bad about that. Don't feel bad. No one ever wants to be told what you know. Me just made me feel bad all over again. And then finally, from just recently, November 30th on Goosebumps, whether all or just some of the members of the band Boston went to school at MIT. Did we ever figure that out? They definitely did not, but I didn't look it up. I just knew that. Oh, well, that was very nice of you to just gently walk past it later on.

Thanks, Ian Bowers. Once again, this is a lot of fun. We'll read them again next year. Very nice. Thanks, Ian. Thank you for completing that very stressful assignment. We would love it if you did it again, okay? Agreed. If you want to be like Ian, you can't. Ian's one of a kind, but you can get in touch with us and send us an email of your own. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you,

hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sorted tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows.