Jack Rosen believes veterinarians need to look back to see how far they have come in their profession.
“One doesn’t start learning about genetics by talking about the double helix,” he said.
“You first have to get the foundation of your discipline.
“You get an appreciation of how you have advanced and how much further we can go if you know where we’ve come from,” Rosen said.
When he started his small animal practice in London, Ont., more than 30 years ago, he noted there was no vaccine for feline leukemia.
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In another example of how science changes, he noted that the 1881 report of the Ontario Agriculture Commission asserted there were no contagious diseases of cattle in Ontario and that TB was not contagious.
A few months later, Robert Koch discovered the TB bacillus.
Rosen has taken a special interest in the history of veterinary medicine and collected dozens of rare and old books, documents and memorabilia.
He recently donated his collection to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine library in Saskatoon.
Now retired, Rosen chose that library because it offered a home for the complete collection, which will be prominently displayed and visible to students in display cases.
Other older Canadian veterinary colleges already had extensive rare book collections and were unable to take the complete collection, or would have packed away his treasures in boxes, he said.
The 330-kilogram collection, shipped by bus to Saskatoon, will be evaluated by experts and insured before being put on display later this year, said Jill Crawley-Low, the vet college’s head librarian.
She saw value in it for students as a resource and in supporting research.
“I thought it was an opportunity to expose students to the history of their profession,” Crawley-Low said.
While the library already has a small collection of rare books, many are available only on microfiche.
“To have the actual documents is really great,” said Crawley-Low, who found Rosen’s meticulous index to be a big help in evaluating the collection.
Rosen’s appetite for veterinary history was first whetted by the discovery in 1970 of a $25 oak box in an antique store.
Inside, he found a black ebony mouth gag and brass stomach pump.
“I’m addicted to collecting and that was the start,” he said.
From there, he added rare and old books to his collection, including one on cattle medicine by Thomas Thopham dated 1787, farrier bills on parchment papers dated 1750-60 and The Books of Country Life published in Latin in the 1500s.
The collection also contains a book on camel medicine and one by the second principal of the Royal Veterinary College.
Rosen, a graduate of the Ontario Veterinary College, contemplated human medicine as a young man but found his great love of animals fit best with veterinary medicine.
“I was totally in love with animals in the first place. I loved everything that crawled or flew,” he said.
In retirement, Rosen, a father of three adult children, keeps busy with family, community work, amateur theatre and mystery writing.
