“ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL”

“ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL”

JAMES HERRIOT’S LEGACY

Probably all of you know perfectly James Herriot’s “All creatures great and small”, since the BBC series was a huge success some decades ago in Britain. But what you probably don’t know is the autobiographical books of this Scottish vet who worked in a rural practice in the Yorkshire

AMES HERRIOT’S LEGACY Probably all of you know perfectly James Herriot’s “All creatures great and small”, since the BBC series was a huge success some decades ago in Britain. But what you probably don’t know is the autobiographical books of this Scottish vet who worked in a rural practice in the Yorkshire dales from the 1930’s are very well known (and appreciated) by nearly all Spanish vets: my professors at the Veterinary School knew them, my first boss knew them… Most of us discovered Herriot when we were students at the Veterinary School. There was no Internet in those days (I started studying my career in 1992), but mouth-to-ear worked really well. In my case, it was a colleague and friend who told me about a British guy who wrote books about his adventures and misadventures when he was an

Probably all of you know perfectly James Herriot’s “All creatures great and small”, since the BBC series was a huge success some decades ago in Britain. But what you probably don’t know is the autobiographical books of this Scottish vet who worked in a rural practice in the Yorkshire dales from the 1930’s are very well known (and appreciated) by nearly all Spanish vets: my professors at the Veterinary School knew them, my first boss knew them… Most of us discovered Herriot when we were students at the Veterinary School. There was no Internet in those days (I started studying my career in 1992), but mouth-to-ear worked really well. In my case, it was a colleague and friend who told me about a British guy who wrote books about his adventures and misadventures when he was an

Most of us discovered Herriot when we were students at the Veterinary School. There was no Internet in those days (I started studying my career in 1992), but mouth-to-ear worked really well. In my case, it was a colleague and friend who told me about a British guy who wrote books about his adventures and misadventures when he was an old fashioned rural vet. I borrowed from him my first Herriot: “Vet in a spin”, which made me discover that microcosm of farmers, green hills, stone walls, horses, cows, sheep, James Herriot, the honest, hard- working vet, Siegfried Farnon, the eccentric, horse expert boss, and his brother Tristan, the crazy student.

Of course, because at the beginning my English was not good enough, I started with Spanish translations. A few years later I considered I was ready for the original books in English, which implies I was enjoying them even more since there was nothing lost in translation, and made me improve my professional vocabulary and colloquial expressions.

From the first moment it became one of my favourite books for many reasons: as a student, I took as a challenge to discover which was the pathology the animal was suffering in every chapter (something equivalent to find the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel); besides, the pleasure of discovering (with a certain amount of envy and nostalgia), how interesting the profession was 50 years ago. The funny thing is, a few years later, we discovered a rural practice at the Yorkshire dales in the 1930’s isn’t so different to a small animal practice on the Spanish Costa in the 21st Century (and not only for the fact that, in both cases, you’d better speak English for making yourself understood), specially the relationship between the vet, the animal and the owner.

Nowadays we have modern X-Ray and ultrasound devices, analyzers, and an enormous variety of drugs such as antibiotics, painkillers, insulin, chemo for tumours, brand new surgical techniques, and probably the most important: the biggest scientific library one can imagine: the Internet. No one of these things existed in Herriot’s times, but since no one of them may fully substitute a good anamnesis (the questions we ask to the owner in order to start finding some clue about what’s happening to the animal), a good exploration, a good “clinical eye”, and, the most important, a trusting relation between vet and client, we must recognize that James Herriot’s legacy is still 100% alive 80 years later.

This is what we love about Herriot’s stories (nowadays, instead of reading the books, we are watching the BBC series since we found the complete DVD collection on ebay for a very reasonable price). The other thing we love is, despite it happened 80 years ago, we can see Herriot and his colleagues used to have, believe it or not, very similar problems, professional challenges, dilemmas, satisfactions, and, why not, types of clients (lovely and not-so-lovely ones) to the ones we have now.

I will end with a couple of anecdotes: James Herriot was not the author’s real name but a pseudonym, because he was afraid of a penalty from RCVS since putting your name in a book was considered unacceptable publicity for a veterinary surgeon. Such a different point of view from nowadays, when it looks like good advertising seems to be even more important than having good professional skills… Thanks to “Vet in a spin” I was the only one in my class who didn’t fail a question in a Pharmacology exam since the professor used a word that hadn’t previously been explained to us.

Sergio Reina Esteban & Liliana Aldeguer Cerdán

English translation by Sergio Reina Esteban

Clinica Veterinaria, Gran Alacant

Tel. 966 698 569