Is Prevention Better than Cure? The Rise and Fall of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, c.1950-1980

Little is known, historically, about the perceived and actual importance of disease prevention within general medical and veterinary practice, its constituent attitudes, practices and politics,and its relationship to disease cure. This paper addresses these issues through a study of veterinary preventive medicine. It focuses on the post-war attempts by leading British vets to reorient veterinary practice around a more preventive approach to livestock disease. I examine vets’ motivations, their definition of preventive medicine, perceptions of its benefits and preferred delivery mechanisms. I also analyse official and farming attitudes to veterinary preventive medicine, and the extent to which it was put into practice. In so doing, I map out the largely unchartered history of the British post-war veterinary profession, and reveal the circumstances under whichvets, farmers and the state were prepared to act on the longstanding belief that ‘prevention is better than cure.