Br. vet.J. (1993). 149, 1

EDITORIAL

S A L U S F I D E S Q U E A N I M A L I U M

In 1938, Britain was on the eve of War. The Minister o f Agriculture, Mr Morrison, might have been excused for having o the r things on his mind when he received a long awaited repor t on the future of veterinary educat ion by a Commit tee h ead ed by Dr Thoma s Loveday. The Commit tee had sat for two years and p r o d u c e d a carefully cons idered repor t on the facilities available for veterinary educa t ion in Britain in relat ion to the probable future d e m a n d for qualified veterinary sur- geons. The repor t wrote of urgent ly-needed investment in veterinary research as well as the r e q u i r e m e n t for radical changes in veterinary educat ion.

Ironically, at a t ime when food p roduc t ion desperately n eed ed to be more efficient and prolific, war delayed implementa t ion of most of the r ecommen- dations. T h e r e was, however, one m e m b e r of the Commit tee who was d e t e rm in ed not to lose the impetus for a more scientific and less empirical approach to animal disease control . He was a young and far-sighted veterinary surgeon called Reg Wooldr idge. In 1942, Wooldr idge launched an appeal for a staggering £1 million e n d o w m e n t fund to provide bursaries and scholarships to improve post-graduate veter inary training. The fund was called the Veter inary Educat ion Trust and f rom this evolved the Animal Heal th Trust which was to become a leading veterinary research cent re dedica ted then, as now, to developing be t te r means of diagnosis, t r ea tment and prevent ion of disease in animals.

Fifty years later, veter inary educa t ion in Britain is very different . We have some excel lent veter inary schools. The AFRC and MAFF institutes have, quite rightly, taken over much of the research work on food p roduc ing animals. The Animal Heal th Trust concent ra tes principally on horses, dogs and cats at its two centres in East AJaglia and in his review of the scientific publications emanat ing f rom the Trust dur ing the last 50 years, Dr Duncan Hannan t , in this issue, provides a dip into the historical archives of this chari table institute.

The Trust has come a long way in half a century. Wooldr idge ' s objectives o f encourag ing veter inary surgeons to under t ake investigations into the diseases o f animals were gradually realized over the years with the open ing in turn o f equine, canine, poul t ry and farm animal research stations. However, as veterinary research in the Uni ted Kingdom gained m o m e n t u m and evolved, there ceased to be a ready source of funds for charity-based i n d e p e n d e n t farm animal research centres and the H o u g h t o n Poul t ly Research Station t ransferred to AFRC contro l and the Stock Farm Livestock Research Cent re closed in 1971 due to lack of financial support .

To mark the golden anniversary of the Trust, two fu r the r papers are publ ished

0007-1935/93/010001-02/$08.00/0 © 1993 Bailli6re Tindall

2 BRITISH VETERINARY JOURNAL, 149, 1

in this issue indicative of cur ren t research p rogrammes underway; the first is in the field of small animal science (Curtis and Barnett , 1993) and the second on applied molecular biology which now forms a major part of the Trust 's work on infectious diseases of the horse (Binns, 1993). Dr Hannan t ' s review well illustrates the Animal Health Trust 's historical policy of communica t ing its findings to others th rough publications and scientific presentat ions, and the two accompanying papers indicate that this policy continues. Fifty years may not seem long c o m p a r e d to, say, the recent bicentenary of the Royal Veter inary College or to the sesquicen- tenary in 1994 of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, nevertheless it is a milestone in the history of a unique, i n d e p e n d e n t and chari table research insti- tute which we are pleased to be able to record in the British Veter inary Journal .

ANDREW HI(;(;INS

Editor

REFERENCES

BINNS (1993). The application of molecular biology to the study of veterinary infectious dis- eases. Br. vet.J. 149, 21-30.

CvRvxs, R. & BA~EYr, K. C. (1993). Progressive retinal atrophy in Miniature I,onghaired Dachshund dogs. BT: vet.J. 149, 71-85.

HANNANT, D. (1993). Scientific publications fi-om the Animal Health Trust at Newmarket 1942-1991: a veterinaD, record. Br. vet.J. 149, 9-19.