Veterinary medicine has been practiced for at least 4000 years. But we’ll never get tired of cute animals being treated in ways we usually think of people being treated, so let’s take a look inside this animal hospital.

She evidently felt very sick indeed, poor little thing, and there were many patients waiting in the doctor’s ante-room whose turn came before hers. She was good and quiet — unlike some of the others — but the stout German woman in whose arms she was cuddled was considerably worried.

Presently the woman, half unconsciously, began to rock back and forth and to hum a little song. Gradually the head of her ailing charge dropped on her shoulder and the small sufferer fell asleep. The German caught the eye of her smiling neighbor.

“Joost like a bay,” she said, looking down at the sleeper with beaming affection.

It was really a bit of a black and tan terrier, and the hospital was that just opened — or rather reopened — for animal surgery by the Medical College of Cornell University.

[…]

“Do, doctor, make him to be well,” says the German woman with tears in her eyes as she surrenders her diminutive black and tan, and the doctor assures her that nothing will be left undone to cure her pet.

And nothing is. Upstairs one climbs, guided by an occasional bark and the antiseptic hospital odor, and there is the room where poor doggies are made well by the surgeons, according to the most modern methods. A major operation is going on, and no less than five surgeons, all qualified to treat human beings, are grouped around a table, with attendants and a quickly moving trained nurse.”

As a relatively new pet owner myself, I’m thankful for the doctors who treat our animals. They really do become like members of the family. That we own.

WHERE SICK ANIMALS ARE CARED FOR LIKE HUMANS: Cornell Medical College Has an Animal Surgery and Dispensary Where Pets Are Cured in the Latest Approved Fashion. (PDF)

From January 29, 1911