Veterinarian in 322: Absyrtus rides with Constantine's cavalry

The profession's scientific foundation is barely 260 years old. Claude Bourgelat opened the first veterinary school in Lyon, France, in 1761, driven not by pets but by rinderpest, a cattle plague capable of wiping out a region's food supply; Britain built its own state veterinary service after a rinderpest outbreak reached London a century later. Only in the last hundred years did the profession's center of gravity shift from farm animals toward the cats and dogs most people now picture when they hear the word 'vet.'

This page traces that shift, from Bourgelat's Lyon and Aleen Cust's decades-long fight to practice as the first woman veterinary surgeon in Britain and Ireland, through James Herriot's Yorkshire practice that made the job beloved worldwide, to today's One Health movement linking animal, human and environmental disease. It also covers what the work costs: veterinary medicine carries one of the highest suicide rates of any profession, and no honest page about this job can leave that out.

How long does it take to become a veterinarian? Most countries require roughly eight years: three to four years of undergraduate prerequisite study, plus a four-year professional degree (DVM, BVSc or BVetMed), before licensing. Some countries — the UK and Australia among them — compress this into a single five- to six-year integrated degree straight after secondary school, so the total time is similar even though the structure looks different.