Readers have responded to the Guardian's recent picture essay on a year in the life of London zoo vets, sharing their own memories of pioneering veterinary work. Among them is John and Michael Appleby, whose father Calvert Appleby worked as a vet at Edinburgh zoo from 1948 to 1959, before moving to the Royal Veterinary College in London. They note that Appleby's early years were spent as a PhD student of veterinary pathology with the Dick veterinary school while also active at the zoo, and he was fully employed there from 1951. This suggests he might have predated Oliver Graham-Jones, who the article states became Britain's first dedicated zoo vet at London zoo in 1951.
Pioneering Treatments and Challenges
For these early zoo vets, animal physiology was often unknown, requiring experimental treatments. Appleby once anaesthetised a crocodile with an abscess using chloroform administered via a large cotton-wool ball on a long pole. Sadly, the crocodile did not survive, as it was not known at the time that reptiles cannot tolerate chloroform. Appleby later received an award from a learned society for his pioneering work on reptiles and amphibians. He also recounted the huge efforts made to move a sick camel indoors one winter's day, only for the camel to stagger to its feet and return to the bottom of the paddock.
A Small, Specialised Community
Zoo vets remained a small and specialised community for many years. From around 1960, vets from across Europe gathered annually in places as far away as Warsaw. Appleby made friends from both sides of the Iron Curtain, one of whom travelled from Berlin to London for his funeral in 2004.
Gavin Greenwood of Brighton recalls working at London zoo in the early 1970s as a ground executive, a euphemism for bin-emptier and dung-shoveller. He describes the magical atmosphere after the public left, when staff could interact with animals, including a rhino, a wolf, and a young female orangutan called Alice, whose keeper said fancied him.
Dr Ann Thwaite of London corrects the notion that AA Milne himself named his bear Winnie; it was his son Christopher Robin, and the bear was named after Winnie, a large Canadian bear from Winnipeg that lived at London zoo long before Christopher Robin was born. She references her book Goodbye Christopher Robin for more details.
