Science and social exclusion: The displacement of albéitares from veterinary medicine as seen through the specialized press on animal care (1853-1855)

© 2014, Editorial Universida de Granada. All rights reserved. The monopolist intentions of the Spanish veterinarians in the mid-19th century confronted a major obstacle in the existence of albéitares. Veterinarians based their claim to be responsible for animal care on their possession of a broad theoretical knowledge and abstract intellectual capacities, which would supposedly lead to an improvement in veterinarian practice. The scientific rhetoric matched the intellectual climate of the time, but there were no corresponding changes in the habits of clients or in the position of public authorities, forcing veterinarians to seek other routes of social legitimization. This paper analyzes the inclusion-exclusion dynamics around the process of monopolization of veterinarian knowledge and practice in the mid-19th century in Spain. The strategies adopted by the two occupational groups in veterinarian publications offer an original perspective on the confrontation between two entities legally recognized to exert the same function. Based on this dichotomy, a struggle arose to define the model of the relationship between those who intended to play a guiding role in animal medicine and those who, due to their greater integration in the society of the time, defended the preservation of their conventional lifestyle. The first effective changes in the organization of care activity were not supported by social acceptance or by client preferences but were rather determined by strictly regulatory postulates.