Equine Health and Medicine: Historical and Literary Perspectives
Dr. Nancy Henry, University of Tennessee Department of English

Description: Equine health affected all aspects of nineteenth-century society and culture in ways that are important to remember today. Nineteenth-century equine epidemics devastated economies around the globe, reminding us that horses were the primary energy source until the advent of the automobile in the twentieth century. Professor Henry will draw on literary representations of farriers and vets and then focus on the practice of equine “tail docking” from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Tail docking was controversial in Britain and the US even as it was widely practiced. It raises larger questions about medical complicity in cruelty, animal rights legislation, and national identity.

One Health + Humanities Days is a collaboration between the UT One Health Initiative and the UT Humanities Center. This three-day series of events showcases the critical role that arts and humanities play in understanding and exploring sustainability and global wellbeing, including human, animal, plant, and environmental health.