Posts

A Few Of My Favourite Things

I thought before I leave my role here, and go off to study for my MA in Archives and Records Management, it would be a nice idea to share snippets of my favourite finds and favourite materials that I’ve had the pleasure of working with during my time with RCVS Knowledge’s historical collections. For those […]

Introducing Helena!

Hi, my name is Helena and I am the new Archive and Digitisation assistant. My role, like Adele’s before me, is to assist in the digitisation and online accessibility of documents within the archive and historical book collection.  I hope to one day become a fully qualified archivist so this role is a wonderful opportunity […]

Digital Collections website is live!

After months of development and tweaking, I am now very happy to show the world our fantastic new Digital Collections website! My most recent blog posts have described the cataloguing process – with the end result of the online archive catalogue. The Digital Collections site serves the other main aim of the RCVS Vet History […]

Edward Mayhew on dogs

In our collection of watercolours by Edward Mayhew there is only one featuring dogs. The top image is captioned ‘Dog with retracted eye – near the termination(?) of  distemper’ and the bottom ‘The lasting effect left by nitrate of silver when applied to an ulcer on the eye of the dog.’ The fact that there […]

Illustration by Edward Mayhew the teeth of a three year old horse

Open wide

In a paper read before members of the Veterinary Medical Association (probably in 1849) Thomas Gowing said “I have …experienced great difficulties in many required operations on the teeth [of the horse] from the want of proper dental instruments.” His solution?  To invent a set of instruments which “I flatter myself, will be found useful… […]

Never mount a strange horse in a crowded place

The artistic Mr Mayhew

I have recently had the opportunity to look more closely at the almost 400 watercolours by Edward Mayhew that we acquired in 1990. Edward Mayhew (1808-1868) was the brother of Henry Mayhew, founding editor of Punch.  It is thought he spent his early years in the theatre before enrolling at the London Veterinary College in […]