Alexandre François Augustin Liautard (February 15, 1835, Paris – April 20, 1918, Bois-Jérôme-Saint-Ouen, Eure, France) was a French veterinarian. 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 (JAVMA).
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.Ph. de Wailly and Lester M. Crawford : The life of Alexandre Liautard, Historia of Medicinae Veterinariae, 1978, 3:2, 47–49
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.Archives de l'École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort, Registre des étudiants ː Alexandre Liautard
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 CrawfordL.M. Crawford : A tribute to Alexandre Liautard, the Father of the American Veterinary Profession. J. of the Am. Vet. Med. Ass, 1976, 169, 35–37 an investigation carried out at the Service historique de l'armée de terreR.C. Gregory et J.C. Godfrain: Le bicentenaire des États-Unis et l'École nationale vétérinaire de Toulouse, Rev. Med. Vet.(Lyon et Toulouse), 1977, 128 (7) (Army history department) 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 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 (doctor in medicine) 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.Ann Norton Greene : Horses at Work: Horses as industrial workers in the book "Horses at Work -(Harnessing Power in Industrial America)", Harvard University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A and London, 2008, pp. 179–214 (and notes). Edited and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa 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".Clay McShane and Joël A. Tarr: The Horse in the City. Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, 242 p.,
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 reliant on 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 (Académie vétérinaire de 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 (who would later become President of the United States), 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 18, 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 (AVMA), in 2013, an article in the association's journal, the JAVMA, dated January 1, 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:
"Entrepreneur" of veterinary education, founder and dean of the veterinary school
In the United States (as in Great Britain 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 (PennVet) 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 (1815–1876), 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