Mar

25

If I seem out of place in strange diagnoses with odd treatments of human ailments, it's only because people aren't accustomed to a veterinarian addressing human medicine. Vets take the same courses as medical students but have a long edge in seeing more patients. How many more? About 30x.

We walk lines of kennels and circle pastures while a physician is limited to his practice and hospitals. Vets take a holistic approach to treatment that should be applied to human medicine, accounting for the weather to what kind of scraps farmer John's wife throws to the pigs. We diagnose by gaze and touch more than by dialogue and lab tests. Vets are not specialists, and have been trained in the anatomy, diagnosis and treatment of four species: dog, cat, cow and horse. Finally, the two vets I worked for treated their own kids, from stitches to prescriptions in their clinic. There are masterful human physicians, but if I had kids who got sick, I would tell them to first go to a veterinarian and get a second opinion from a physician.

Rip McKenzie writes: 

I tell others, doctors deal with one species that can talk. Vets deal with multiple species that can't.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

2 Comments so far

  1. Justin on March 25, 2011 12:54 pm

    I wholeheartedly concur, with the exception of limiting veterinarians’ experience to four species. You forget goats, sheep, rabbits, and in the case of my father (WSU ‘71), the occasional bear cub, mountain lion, owl, hawk, eagle and even a pet python once. He spent several years on the Tibetan plateau working on yaks as well. He’s stitched up a few humans over the years, including himself, my mother, and the occasional person who didn’t have the money to pay for the same service from a human physician.

    Apart from the occasional blood or tissue sample sent off to the lab, it was all done with relatively simple tools, close observation and the power of deduction. He had a professor in vet school who said “More diagnoses are missed by not looking than by not knowing,” a truth that obviously applies to more than just the welfare of animals.

    Of course, the AMA would come completely unglued if they found out that vets were treating humans, so it’s probably best to seek such treatment in the quietest way possible.

  2. Bill Welch on March 25, 2011 1:42 pm

    I’d go to a good Chiropractor first! My daughter is a excellent one, a graduate of Logan College of Chiropractic. There is more than drugs, cutting, burning & poisoning to treating patients. Most Chiro’s take the Holistic approach. Treat the root, not the fruit! They get better results! The sad thing is the get paid less than the MD’s & Vets. Check out Eustace Mullins book - “Murder by Injection”. http://cottblue.net/Books_pdf/murderinjection.pdf

Archives

Resources & Links

Search