Venice and The Veterinarian: Enlightement, Epidemics, and the Creation of the Chair of Veterinary Medicine at Padua

The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed an increased interest in animal health (primarily equine health) and a corresponding explosion of printed texts such as farriery manuals. As with so many other Renaissance scientific texts, these manuals stood at the boundary between high culture and artisanal knowledge, classical learning and new forms of empiricism. For later proponents of Veterinary medicine as a proper medical discipline—especially the first chair of Veterinary medicine at the University of Padua, Giuseppe Orus—these Renaissance texts became an uncomfortable legacy that threatened their ambitions. This talk will examine the ways in which Orus dealt with the legacy of Renaissance farriery manuals as he sought to legitimize Veterinary practice as part of the medical curriculum at the University of Padua.