In man's adventurous struggle from savagery, animals were an indispensable possession, providing food, clothing, shelter and transportation; thus the arts of zootechnics and veterinary medicine developed contemporaneously with civilization itself.
As early as 2100 B.C. the laws of Hammurabi provided rigid regulations for the conduct of veterinary practitioners, while Moses established a system of meat inspection that is still practiced and respected for efficiency by the modern meat inspector. The handling of the fifth plague in Egypt (anthrax) evinces a high degree of veterinary skill. Cattle belonging to the Israelites were driven away from the streams to high ground and survived, while cattle belonging to the Pharaoh's people remained in the valleys and succumbed. The same measure for the control of anthrax is used in addition to immunological procedures in regions where the disease is still prevalent. When the eastern Greek empire fell before its Asiatic conqueror, the library at Constantinople contained many veterinary manuscripts, and they, almost alone, were saved when that library was burned. The scientific value of the works during a period of history marked by plague and famine was all but destroyed through the faults of insufficient translators and scribes.
Food reserves could be accumulated only in living animals, and aggregations of animals made but more certain visitations of disease, which swept away not only food and raiment but also the means of transportation and of tilling the land. By the beginning of the latter half of the 18th century food was the limiting factor in military power. To make certain a supply of food for her armies, France, in 1762, established at Lyons, the first veterinary school of modern times, and in rapid succession every important country of Europe followed her example.
With the establishment of a modern veterinary knowledge the devastating animal plagues were banished, and famines, except as a result of war, ceased to occur in civilized countries.
