This book, Genre in English Medical Writing, 1500–1820, is adorned with thirty-five figures. Many of these figures are tables or graphs condensing the evidence and arguments of a particular author into forms that can be appreciated better through visualisation. The authors of chapters employing this presentational kind of figure have used their own computer software to generate them. They have no problems other than those involved in designing the book – how best to fit such figures into the layout of the chapter and the pages in which they are found. Other kinds of figure in this book are not presentational in this way but are quite different. These are images chosen by the author, and they reproduce pages in manuscripts or printed books of the early modern era. The author may refer to these images in the text of the chapter as evidence in pursuit of an argument, or choose them as emblems of the kind of things discussed (and so not essential to the argument). Illustrations that do necessary work for the argument of the chapter are found in the chapters by Peter Jones (Chapter 2), Alpo Honkapohja (Chapter 5), and Maura Ratia (Chapter 13). In the last two cases the argument focuses on the ways in which the same or similar textual matter is represented very differently in scribal handiwork, layout, or typography at different dates. The third kind of emblematic figure is there to engage the interest of the reader, giving material form (manuscript or printed) to the genre under discussion in the chapter. This applies to the figures in the Image Gallery, where Figure 2 is an emblem of London in time of plague, Figure 3 an author portrait, and Figure 6 a satire on man-midwifery, all from early modern printed books. The images supplied for these kinds of illustrative figure must first be obtained from professional imaging services or directly from libraries. In extraordinary times of lockdown, as we saw in the Preface to the Image Gallery, there may be difficulties in getting images or permissions.

The unusual conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic have thrown ‘normal’ authorial and publishing practice into sharp relief. Lockdown in its various forms and degrees has suddenly interrupted normal service. Perhaps a print or manuscript can no longer be photographed, or the curator cannot even enter the building where it is kept. Curators on furlough or working from home cannot easily fulfil an author’s demands, even if those only involve processing permissions to reproduce images. Questions of image supply and reproduction of images suddenly loom larger for author and publisher than previously anticipated. This is certainly the case for this book. Chapter 2, for instance, explains how a seventeenth-century English surgeon copied his own designs for instruments by hand into an interleaved fifteenth-century manuscript of the work of a medieval surgeon. It has proved impossible to get a photograph of the surgeon Walter Hamond’s new instrument designs, although by good luck the fifteenth-century model was available to the author as a TIFF image.

Arderne’s writings retained their popularity in both Latin and English after 1500, showing the artificiality of the supposed division between medieval and early modern. This chapter investigates surviving manuscripts made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, commissioned or owned by practising surgeons and medics, rather than by university teachers or scholars. These manuscripts were heavily illustrated within or alongside the text-block, reinforcing the textual bias towards visualisation and personal witness. As case studies, the chapter will also consider the single printing (1588) of Arderne’s writings on fistula in ano, edited by the barber surgeon John Read, and a manuscript owned c.1645–8 by the ship’s surgeon Walter Hamond, who reflected on the continued usefulness of Arderne’s surgical techniques and recipes, suggested some improvements, and also commented on the financial charges Arderne made for his services and their contemporary equivalents.

Globalization is not new. From the time of ancient migrations, human activities increasingly shaped the ecologies of health and disease around the world. When the peoples of the Western and Eastern Hemispheres encountered each other, the invading Europeans brought their domesticated animals, plants, and diseases with them. These demographic and ecological transformations ushered in a new era for animal healing and veterinary medicine. How were animal diseases circulating around the world due to exploration, colonialism, war, and trade? What was the impact of these diseases on human health and well-being, and on the projects of colonialism and state formation? The impacts of large-scale animal epidemics and pandemics enabled by the ecological exchanges of animals, parasites, and pathogens are analyzed. Further, this chapter highlights the development of physiology, pathology, and new disease causation models, while investigating how medical concepts, popular beliefs, and therapies were used in animal health care.

Veterinary medicine can be defined as the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of animal health problems in the context of human–animal relationships. This broad definition is used in this book to include many types of animal healing throughout history. However, this "concise" history of veterinary medicine does not attempt to include all important topics in the history of animal healing. Instead, the history of animal healing and veterinary medicine is framed using a global and world history approach. Activities are included at the end of each chapter that encourage readers to explore the veterinary history of their own region and nation. Every chapter considers how animal healing interacted with tensions between the economic, military, and cultural value, status, and uses of domesticated animals. Who were the animal healers? What was their social status? How were they trained? What skills and knowledge did they have? How did people explain or theorize, and respond to, animal health problems in each place and time period?

In 2021 veterinary medicine faces traditional concerns and new realities. These include the need to ensure food animal and herd health in a world increasingly affected by emerging diseases and climate change. However, most Western veterinarians specialize in individual treatment of companion animals (pets), not herd health, and this is becoming more common globally. Veterinary leaders are concerned about this workforce imbalance, the challenges of critical animal owners and consumers, and sustainable food production. Many people have ethical concerns about technological developments such as the ability to genetically modify and clone organisms. Young veterinarians face educational debt, increasing competition, and high levels of stress. In response, veterinary education must include the "soft skills" and "support skills," such as how to communicate effectively, make ethical judgments, and manage stress. The veterinary profession, and its members, must be well informed, flexible, and able to change quickly to meet the challenges of animal owners’ expectations, controlling disease without harming ecosystems, and feeding the world’s people despite the inequalities built into the global animal economy. As mediators between humans and animals, veterinarians and other animal healers have both shaped and been shaped by the social, cultural, and economic roles of animals over time.

Veterinary education, training, and employment shifted to support military needs in wartime. Conflicts around the world, including World War I, relied on millions of horses, dogs, and food-producing animals to supply armies. Wartime disruptions, and the movement of so many animals, sparked outbreaks of diseases that challenged animal owners, healers, and veterinarians. The use of horsepower declined in industrialized areas, depriving veterinarians of their most important patients. Many turned instead to livestock and food production. National campaigns against bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, and other zoonoses employed many veterinarians. Others worked on vaccines and therapeutics in biomedical research. With the outbreak of World War II, ethical questions troubled veterinarians who contributed to the development of biological weapons. Rebuilding the world’s food production systems after the war stimulated international veterinary cooperation and incorporated new tools, such as antibiotics. Veterinarians also helped make intensive animal production ("factory farming") possible by controlling diseases, while more and more vets in wealthier areas treated companion animals (pets).

Developments in international trade, colonialism, and conquest created the military needs (healthy army horses) and economic needs (controlling great animal plagues) that shaped the professionalization of modern veterinary medicine in Europe and beyond. This chapter analyzes how the circulation of veterinary knowledge was organized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, amidst the challenges of animal disease outbreaks and battlefield injuries that had accompanied war and trade. It examines how modern veterinary schools emerged from European Enlightenment pragmatism and French physiocrat economics, and why and how this model of education spread around the world. State promotion and regulation of veterinary education and professionalization of veterinary practitioners increased, augmenting the traditional roles of herders and healers in many areas. Veterinarians educated in this formal European tradition slowly expanded their share of the market for veterinary services as their numbers and state-sponsored influence grew. The development and spread of the eighteenth-century European veterinary regime was a product of its time. It fulfilled crucial social, political, military, and cultural needs during subsequent decades of increasing industrialization and imperialism affecting the globe.