The Winning of Animal Health: 100 Years of Veterinary Medicine tells the story of the individuals and organizations that have worked together in the face of animal disease calamities to build veterinary science to the professional level it enjoys today. Professor O. M. V. Stalheim presents the struggles for animal health from the era of home remedies and noxious plant extracts, springtime surgery, and first aid to the use of safe and efficacious drugs and vaccines, pain-free surgery, cancer therapy, organ transplants, biotechnology, animal welfare, and animal rights. Stalheim also describes the battles won against diseases such as blackleg in cattle, pullorum in poultry, and distemper in fur animals as examples of how veterinary entrepreneurs developed research methods and created industries that helped raise animal health in America to its present high level. Stalheim explores the 100-year struggle against hog cholera, a disease that appeared in the early 19th century and wreaked havoc as it spread from state to state, killing millions of pigs and devastating farmers. Individuals and agencies - in particular, the Bureau of Animal Industry (U.S. Department of Agriculture) - faced this threat together, growing in confidence and knowledge and moving toward the eventual eradication of the disease in 1978. Through such cooperative efforts, the veterinary profession matured, and a lucrative animal pharmaceutical industry developed. Today, veterinary science and medicine is a "research-practice" complex that embraces the health needs of more than a million animal species with very different biological natures; thousands of pathogenic agents of variable pathogenicity; and such important factors as genetics, nutrition, housing, natural and manufactured toxins, and humane and environmental concerns.

Sovereign profession -- Whipping blackleg -- Poultry health: an englishman shows the way -- Fromm Laboratories: the battle against diseases of dogs, cats and fur animals -- Great hog cholera problem -- Eradication of hog cholera -- Colorado Serum Company: a pioneer family-owned supplier -- Fort Dodge Laboratories: from a one-man laboratory to an international conglomerate -- New deal and animal health organizations -- Veterinary pharmaceutical industry -- Veterinary professionalism.