Alexandre Liautard


Alexandre François Augustin Liautard was a French veterinarian born on February 15, 1835 in Paris and died April 20, 1918 at Bois-Jérôme-Saint-Ouen,. After graduating from the École nationale vétérinaire de Toulouse in 1856, he emigrated to the United States in 1859 to exercise his profession of veterinary practitioner in New York until 1900, when he retired and returned to France. The name of Alexandre Liautard is associated with the beginning of private veterinary education in America. Liautard was the founder and dean of the New York American Veterinary College. He participated in organizing the American Veterinary profession and founded the United States Veterinary Medical Association, now the American Veterinary Medical Association, of which he was for many years a driving force. His name is still cited in the American veterinary press as a dominant figure in the history of the profession for having defined its professional standards and missions, and been a uniting force, and as founder of the American Veterinary Review, now the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
Alexandre Liautard is honored today, as he was during his lifetime, as the « father of the American veterinary profession ».

Biography

Alexandre François Augustin Liautard was born on 15 February 1835 at 33 rue Neuve-Saint- Augustin, now rue Saint-Augustin, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. He was the son of Jean-François Liautard, a locksmith contractor, and Charlotte Gabrielle Héloïse Vives, born in Paris, and who died in 1841 when Alexandre Liautard was only five years old. He had two sisters. His maternal uncle Étienne Gabriel Vives was a veterinarian in the military profession.

Veterinary studies

In 1851, Alexandre Liautard was accepted as pupil at the École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort. In 1855, his father died and, five days later, Alexandre was expelled from Alfort « for a very serious breach of discipline » the subject of which is unknown. In addition, he had been unable to take the exams at the end of the first semester, due to illness. After halting his studies for several months he was admitted to the École nationale vétérinaire de Toulouse where he finished his fourth year and obtained his diploma in 1856.

Veterinary practitioner in New-York

His activities between 1856 and 1859 remain unknown. His award certificate for the Legion of Honor mentions three years of military service, and although this was initially quoted by Lester Crawford an investigation carried out at the Service historique de l'armée de terre in France did not find any mention of his name. In addition, the military service period was six years at that time, and in accordance with the Gouvion-Saint-Cyr law, admission was by recruitment or by random draw. It is therefore most likely that Liautard drew a "good number" and was not recruited.
He arrived at New York in 1859 where he settled and quickly opened a veterinary clinic. The city was in full expansion at that time, despite the Civil War which began in 1861. Developments were not only economic but also occurring at the university level. Fifteen universities were created during this wartime period, including Cornell, Swarthmore College and the MIT. Minds were also open to the creation of professional colleges.
At the beginning of Liautard's career in New York, very few American veterinarians possessed diplomas and all those who did had received veterinary training in Europe. Many « horse doctors » were simply farriers. It was in this context that Liautard was able to establish himself in New York, despite the inevitable difficulties of acclimatizing to a new culture and working in a language foreign to him. He settled in the centre of New York City, at 215, Lexington Avenue. At the same time, he acquired the diploma of medical doctor at the University Medical College, now the New York University School of Medicine. The intense activity that he deployed as a practitioner during his forty years of professional life in the United States enabled him to become very affluent, even wealthy, judging by his real estate acquisitions on his return to France in 1900. Above all, it provided him with the means to finance his undertakings in veterinary education and publishing in the United States.
To emphasize the extent of the market open to the veterinary profession, Liautard periodically published, in the American Veterinary Review, statistics on American livestock and meat exports which he compared with those of the main European countries and their imports. Horses were extremely important in towns at that time, due to the use of horse-drawn vehicles.
Importance of the equine population in the United States
The end of the 19th century marked the heyday of the horse. Long considered as the century of steam and railways, the 19th century was above all an equine century. Rail transport and horse-drawn transport were complementary. During the Gilded Age the equine population in the United States rose from 7 million in 1860 to 25 million in 1900. Although town horses only represented 11 to 12% of this population, their importance in urban development was considerably greater. In 1900, the average density was 426 horses per square mile in the 46 largest cities of the United States, and 500 in New York City and Chicago. In 1900, horses lived and worked in Manhattan, in Chicago, and in Philadelphia. In 1879, the New York Times wrote : « New York must move on wheels, the whole population must drive...This is obviously a « stable city ».
Horse-drawn vehicles in the streets of New York, 1880-1900

Family life and return to France

In New York, Alexandre Lieutard married Emily Joséphine Stouvenel the daughter of French immigrants to New-York. Their only daughter, Marie-Louise was born in 1864 in New York where she was brought up. In 1890, she married Octave Boyer who had come to New York to set up a branch of the Grande Maison de Blanc, a luxury Brussels store in Opéra district of Paris. The New York store on Fifth avenue was closed down in the 1960s. In 1900, when Octave Boyer was made director of the Grande Maison de Blanc, boulevard des Capucines, in Paris, Alexandre Liautard retired and returned to France with his wife, then confined to a wheelchair due to cerebral infarction, and with his daughter and son-in-law. It seems that Liautard was too attached to his daughter to let her leave without him. They lived in a vast apartment on the fourth floor of a luxury building at 14, avenue de l'Opéra.
Although no longer a practitioner, Liautard continued to develop numerous activities. As honorary dean of New York American Veterinary College, he kept up extensive correspondence from France with his American colleagues and continued to write editorials for his American Veterinary Review. He took part in the meetings of the Central Society of Veterinary Medicine which, in 1928 and thanks to Emmanuel Leclainche, became the Veterinary Academy of France. He became its president in 1911. From 1914 onwards he provided financial support for the activities of the Commission for Relief in Belgium initiated by Herbert Hoover, to provide aid to German-occupied Belgium.
In 1911, he purchased a small 19th century chateau, La Mare aux Cerfs, at Bois-Jérôme-Saint-Ouen, near to Vernon, in the Eure. It was there that he died on April 18th 1918 following a heart attack.

Work and achievements

Although Alexandre Liautard remains little known in France, he is famous and recognized by the veterinary world of the United States as a dominant figure in the history of the American veterinary profession.
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the American Veterinary Medical Association, in 2013, an article in the association's journal, the JAVMA, dated January 1st 2013, described him as one of the 12 most famous figures in the history of the American veterinary profession and, during that year, devoted the first of the twelve biographies of founders published by the journal, to him:
« Dr Alexandre Francois Liautard, the father of the American veterinary profession, almost single-handedly transformed the uneducated, disorganized veterinarians of the United States into a learned profession. He founded two veterinary schools that served as the blueprints for veterinary education as it exists today. He also helped establish the AVMA and was the first editor of its Journal. »

« Entrepreneur » of veterinary education, founder and dean of the veterinary school

In the United States but unlike France, the first veterinary schools were private enterprises. Like the universities to which they are attached, many still are today. The first American Veterinary colleges, recognized legally as such, were created between 1850 and 1860 at Philadelphia, Boston and New York City. Today, the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, founded in 1879, the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine founded in 1884, the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine founded in 1885, and the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, founded in 1894, are the four oldest American veterinary establishments still functioning. For the record, the French veterinary schools of Lyon and Alfort were founded in 1761 and 1765, respectively, the École nationale vétérinaire de Toulouse was created in 1825 and inaugurated in 1835 and the Royal Veterinary College of London in 1791. The first Principal of this latter was a French veterinarian, Charles Vial de Saint Bel, who trained at the Veterinary School of Lyon.

The New York College of Veterinary Surgeons

The first three American veterinary colleges at Philadelphia, Boston and New York were not successful and did not last long. The New York College of Veterinary Surgeons, founded in 1857 by Dr John Busteed, a doctor of Irish origin, is considered as the veritable precursor of veterinary teaching in the United States, but the establishment had to close down in 1859, due to lack of pupils. Dr Busteed did not abandon his project and reorganized his school in 1862. Liautard had been in New York since 1860 and had already set up premises at 205 Lexington Avenue. His notoriety must have already been well-established and his position sufficiently secure for him to be able to house this college in his own building, by private arrangement, where it opened in 1864. He was a member of the teaching staff and continued his activity as practitioner on the premises, which remained his property. Doctors formed part of the teaching staff. In 1870, Busteed retired and Liautard succeeded him as president of the teaching body. The establishment was directed by a board of trustees. In 1875, dissension arose within the board of trustees. All the teaching staff resigned and followed Liautard who founded his own school: the « American Veterinary College ».
The New York College of Veterinary Surgeons continued to function as best it could and finished by merging in 1899 with the American Veterinary College directed by Liautard. He trained a total of 292 graduate veterinary surgeons. In the meantime, some teachers left to create the « Columbia Veterinary College » which lasted from 1878 to 1884 and trained a total of 82 graduates.

The American Veterinary College

In April 1875, two months after closure of the New York College of Veterinary Surgeons, the American Veterinary College opened as a private establishment under the direction of Liautard, in a new building that he had purchased at 141 West 54th Street. Both the college and veterinary clinic were owned by Liautard who taught and had a practice there until his retirement and return to France in 1900.
The College rapidly became very famous, mainly due to the personal genius of Liautard on all fronts, not only as a teacher and reputed clinician, but also as manager and remarkable organizer of a professional network of former pupils he had trained, and with whom he corresponded and supported through his journal, the « American Veterinary Review ».
In April 1887, Liautard wrote:
''
The clinical activities of the Hospital Department of the American Veterinary College were published annually; in 1887 he summarized the 12 previous years as follows :
It is remarkable that, throughout this entire period, all these results were obtained by self-financing with hardly any external support. Nevertheless, Liautard's ambitions to develop his school would require such support, if not as aid from the public authorities, at least as private contributions, in accordance with the American culture favoring private initiative, and it was to these that he appealed in 1887. He relied on the results of the American Veterinary College and on a favorable editorial published by the New York Herald, then the most widely-read newspaper in the United States, from which Liautard reproduced the following extracts in the American Veterinary Review ː
Between 1875 and 1899, the American Veterinary College trained 629 graduates.

Liautard and the creation of new veterinary colleges

More than his own professional success, which was certainly fundamental but above all provided the means to satisfy his ambitions, Liautard's grand project was to create or encourage the emergence of an organized American veterinary profession, recognized professionally and scientifically like the medical profession. He considered the Union territory sufficiently vast for other initiatives like his to be developed in other States and encouraged all of them provided that the professional standard, which he never ceased to promote, was respected.
His relationship with James Law, another great name in the history of American veterinary medicine, is highly instructive in this respect. James Law, a veterinarian of Scottish origin, was recruited by Ezra Cornell to provide veterinary teaching in the specialized University of Agronomy that he had founded at Ithaca, now Cornell University, in New York State. In 1894, James Law was responsible for creating the College of veterinary medicine within this private university, even though the American Veterinary College existed in the same State, in New York City, in Manhattan. Liautard opened the columns of his Journal to Law and supported his teaching and university projects, provided that they ultimately resulted in a college of veterinary medicine which applied the same statutes and professional standards to train veterinarians as those laid down for the American Veterinary College, and that in no case would it be a question of training empirics ː
To which Law vigorously defended himself in the American Veterinary Review, explaining his vision and project which already corresponded to the demands of Research-linked higher education and received support for this from the public authorities. Many former pupils of Liautard taught at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and in veterinary colleges in other States of the Union.
James Law was the first veterinary professor of an American university and greatly improved the scientific standard of veterinary training.
« Triumph and Tragedy : The Story of Law and Liautard »
« Triumph and Tragedy : The Story of Law and Liautard » : It is in these terms that Donald Smith, who was dean of Cornell Veterinary College from 1997 to 2007, described the relationship between Liautard and Law, a « triumph » for Law who saw the fruition of his life's work, in the creation of Cornell Veterinary College, which was ranked first of the 30 veterinary schools in the United States, and therefore first in the world, right from the beginning until just a few years ago, before being dethroned by that of Davis, in California. And yet a « tragedy », in the opinion of dean Smith, who considered Liautard's strategic vision to have a major veterinary school in the university world of New York City, rather than in the countryside of Ithaca, was the better one
Integration of the Veterinary Colleges into the university system
In 1899, the American Veterinary College merged with the New York College of Veterinary Surgeons to form the New York American Veterinary College, of which Liautard was dean. At the same time the college became part of the University of New York,, thereby satisfying Liautard's expectations who considered the insertion of veterinary training into the American university systemn, like all American establishments of higher education, self-evident. This attachment was a prerequisite to obtaining the hoped-for aid, as the New York State Veterinary College, from the State of New York, just like the veterinary College of Cornell set up in 1894 within Cornell University,. According to T.F. Jones, New York University historian, « the Veterinary School was, from its beginning, hampered by a meagreness of resources that was relieved only by the self-sacrifice of an enthusiastic faculty ». Accreditation of the New York American Veterinary College as the New York State Veterinary College would have made it possible to hope that « the metropolitan school would receive the same financial support from the Albany Assembly as that of its rural sister college at Ithaca » but Liautard retired and returned to France in 1900. This objective was attained in 1913.
The 50th anniversary of the American Veterinary Medical Association celebrated in 1913 was the occasion to remember Liautard's contribution to American veterinary medicine and to re-deliver the toasting speech made to him by Rush S. Huidekoper during the 25th anniversary of the American Veterinary College ː

Closure of New York University New York State Veterinary College

In 1923, New York University New York State Veterinary College was closed down, leaving only the New York State Veterinary College of Cornell University. The severe diminution of the horse population, due to rapid expansion of the automobile, and before being supplanted by the dog as a pet animal, together with the enormous correlated reduction in the number of veterinary candidates, contributed to this closure. The decisive element, after death of the College dean, Horace Hoskins, in 1921, was the discontinuation of financial support from the New York State administration for the year 1921–1922, who concentrated their financial support on Cornell College. Thus there is no longer any veterinary college in New York City today.
The two main veterinary colleges in the United States ceased activity at the same time and for the same reasons : the Chicago Veterinary College which trained graduates, notably for the army, and the Kansas City Veterinary College which trained, and also the Mc Killip Veterinary College of Chicago, which trained graduates and was associated with enormous clinical activity.
These creations and closures of veterinary colleges constitute an essential trait in the history of veterinary teaching in the United States where 41 veterinary schools were closed down.

Organizer of the American veterinary profession : at the origin of the American Veterinary Medical Association

In 1863, during a local meeting of veterinarians at Philadelphia, Robert Jennings proposed that a national congress should be held to improve the level of veterinary practice in the United States and for this invited veterinarians including John Busteed, A.S. Copeman, A. Liautard, and Charles M. Wood. It was decided to meet in NewYork City on June 9, 1863. Colonel Charles A. Stetson, friend and supporter of the veterinary profession, lent them a large room in his hotel, Astor House, then the most prestigious hotel in New York. This first congress assembled 40 delegates representing 7 states : New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio and Delaware.
The association, entitled the United States Veterinary Medical Association, was created on June 10, 1863. Liautard was elected secretary. Aged 28 at that time, he had been living in America for only three years and was already considered as one of the profession's most prominent figures. He would go on to be the president in 1874–1875, 1875-1876 and 1886–8732.
In 1907, after retiring to France in 1900, Liautard wrote in the American Veterinary Review : Each time that the occasion presented itself, and in terms of encouragement, Liautard never omitted to emphasize the strong points of American veterinary medicine as compared with European veterinary medicine, including that of France.
In 1898, the United States Veterinary Medical Association became the American Veterinary Medical Association. In 1913, during the 50th anniversary meeting of the Association, held at New York, on September 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, at the Hotel Astor, Dr Hoskins rendered a resounding tribute to « the father of the profession » who had had to remain in France with his wife : During the inaugural session, the speech that Liautard had sent in was read, in which he retraced the history of the association.
Today the AVMA is a powerful professional organization and has more than members divided between the different professional groups, freelance veterinarians, the Administration, Teaching and Research, Industry etc. Its headquarters are at Shaumburg in Illinois.

Liautard, journalist and editor ː the American Veterinary Review

On March 20, 1876, the USMVA, which preceded the American Veterinary Medical Association, launched publication of the American Veterinary Review. Alexandre Liautard was made chief writer, a post that he occupied until 1900, he was also the editor. In 1881, the Association donated it to him, in recognition of the work he had accomplished for the Review and for the profession. According to J. Fred Smithcors, the American veterinary profession historian, by taking over control of the Review, he was then able to express his ideas and his professional development program « totally independently » :
Liautard, owner of the Journal, made it a vector for the propositions that he put forward and developed in all fields of activity in the veterinary profession, current or yet to come. He also used it as a weapon, with his concise and potent editorials, in which he was prompt to denounce anything that seemed, to him, an obstacle to the common good, the national interest or professional ethics.

Organizing the profession

Amongst his numerous and varied professional undertakings, particular mention must be made of those concerning veterinary public health and defense of the veterinary diploma :
Veterinary public health
As early as 1880, during an outbreak of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, Liautard urged the federal government and the States within the Union to set up a health program for the control of infectious diseases. In 1881, he demanded the creation of State veterinarians. This epidemic was so serious that it resulted in an embargo by the British government prohibiting the export of American cattle to Great Britain and Canada. In 1883, this embargo led the federal authorities to create a veterinary service within the USDA, to eradicate the disease, entrusting its direction to Daniel Elmer Salmon who, in 1884, made it the Bureau of Animal Industry. Liautard strongly encouraged his students to become involved or take a position in this newly created public service and would, if necessary, defend them. Thus in 1889, he spoke out vehemently against what he called the « political guillotine » used on public service veterinarians, victims of the spoils system which could result in their dismissal, in response to political changes, without any consideration of their competence.
Regulation of the veterinary diploma
In 1880, Liautard was the only American representative among the 65 foreign honorary members of the British veterinary evaluation organization, the Council of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
Using this British model as a basis, in January 1882 he devoted an editorial to promote the creation of a College of veterinary surgeons of America in the form of an association of member veterinarians responsible for electing a board of examiners which had the exclusive right to grant a diploma, which would be the only qualification recognized and required to exercise veterinary medicine, and which would require students to take a final exam before this board of examiners.
This project was launched in 1948 with the creation by the AVMA of the National Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners, and the commissioning in 1954 of a National Board Examination. To avoid conflicts of interest, the NBVME is now independent of the AVMA, and has been renamed International Council for Veterinary Assessment. In January 1998, a computerized evaluation procedure, the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination replaced the NBE

The promotion of scientific advances

At the same time, the American Veterinary Review served not only for information and professional training but also as a means to diffuse scientific knowledge thanks to contributions by the greatest European scientists working in the field of animal health, such as Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Edmond Nocard, Henri Toussaint, Auguste Chauveau etc., whose articles he translated into English.
Support for Pasteur
In the very first issues of the American Veterinary Review in 1877, Liautard asserted that he was a « rational Pasteurian », adhering to the germ theory of disease, like Henri Bouley, the most illustrious French veterinarian of the time, teacher and practitioner, publishing the latter's famous lecture at the French Academy of Sciences, May 7th 1877, on the bacterial etiology of anthrax. Through his writings and teaching, he led the entire American veterinary profession to subscribe to this approach, in the same way that the French would do after Bouley, whereas in both the United States and France the medical world would do so much later.

Handover period: the JAVMA

In 1896, Roscoe R. Bell, former pupil and professor at the American Veterinary College, became co-editor with Liautard. In 1900, Dr Robert W. Ellis became owner of one third of the Journal and was responsible for its management. Liautard continued as senior editor and Bell as editor. In September 1915, the American Veterinary Medical Association purchased the Review and the publication was renamed Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the JAVMA, that we know today as the official periodical of the association of American veterinarians. Liautard, who had retired to France in 1900, continued to contribute to each issue until his death

Personality

His exceptional energy and capacity for hard work, the charisma exerted by this teacher on his students and former pupils, and the admiration, respect and affection that they accorded him in return, stand out as one reads the proceedings of the meetings and testimonials reported in the American Veterinary Review and the JAVMA.

The impact of Liautard on his pupils and on the veterinarians of his time

Smithcors writes :

Liautard and American nationality

In the obituary published in 1918 by the « Société Centrale de Médecine Vétérinaire » of which he had been president in 1911, one reads : Nevertheless, despite his remarkable success and perfect integration into American society, Liautard retained his French nationality. In a letter dated September 28, 1902, written from Paris to Henry MacCracken, chancellor of New York University, who had begged Liautard to return to New York to take up the post of dean of New York University New York American Veterinary College, Liautard replied : « the fact that I kept my nationality could raise objections, as was the case when I lived in New York ». Smithcors also mentioned: « Although he lived in the United States for forty years and amassed a small fortune, he never became a citizen. For much of his life here he was referred to affectionately as "Frenchy" by his closest associates - although perhaps not to his face ».

An element of mystery

The reasons for his expulsion as a pupil from the Veterinary School of Alfort at the beginning of his fourth academic year, for « grave misconduct », after he had already received a reprimand in his 3rd year, remain unknown. But one can easily imagine such a forceful and outspoken character getting into conflict with some of his superiors who were not lucky enough to meet his esteem. It is not impossible that he made them aware of this in the same scathing terms that he would later use in America to stigmatize colleagues who hadn’t either. If this was the case, and knowing the extremely severe disciplinary regulations in French veterinary schools at this time, one can understand the sanction that followed. Liautard does not seem to have borne any grudge against the School of Alfort, and certainly not against the most illustrious figures that were there at that time, notably the director Eugène Renault, and the clinical professor Henri Bouley, to whom he paid tribute on numerous occasions in his Review.
Nor do we dispose of any financial accounts of his professional activity which enabled him to amass a « small fortune » according to Smithcors, but we can guess that he not only exerted powerful leadership within the school, of which he was the owner, but also had the eminent and lucrative position of being the most prominent veterinary practitioner in New York at this time.
His total investment in both his teaching and professional activities, right to the very end of his life, meant that his return to France not only came as a surprise but also created a vacuum that was difficult to fill, to such an extent that, as indicated above, the chancellor of New York University, Henry MacCracken, asked him to return to exercise his function as dean. It has been suggested that Liautard was too attached to his only daughter to agree to be separated from her when she returned to France. His devotion to the end to his wife, now in a state of profound mental impairment, also shows that, at that moment, he chose what he considered to be his family duty after devoting forty years of his life to his profession, even if he continued to serve this latter until the very end of his life.

Distinctions and tributes

The only French distinctions that Liautard received were those of Knight of the Order of Agricultural Merit and Knight of the Legion of Honor. His Legion of Honor certificate indicates that this was awarded in recognition of services rendered in facilitating the installation of the Pasteur Institute at New York, he was the veterinary consultant.
The greatest tribute rendered to Alexandre Liautard is to be honored today, as he was when still alive, and as written on the marker at the Père Lachaise cemetery, as the « Father of the American Veterinary Profession ».

Reviews and works