Odd question: What would uneducated veterinarians have used for anesthesia?

Factual Questions
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A sort of out-of-the-blue thing I started wondering about today.

I grew up on a cattle farm out in the boondocks (no singing please) 30+ years ago. Today “college educated veterinarian” is redundant, but at the time it wasn’t so and still may not be: there were several “cow doctors” or “horse doctors” who had no formal education and in some cases could barely write their names. While they were a mixed bunch, some of them really knew their stuff and performed everything from routine shots and innoculations to some fairly complex medical procedures on these animals including removing bullets or applying casts to broken legs [contrary to popular belief, it’s not always necessary to shoot a horse who breaks her leg]).

Sometimes I saw these unlicensed/uneducated vets give the animals painkillers in the form of a shot. They also gave shots that helped induce labor or make the milk flow if the mother’s colostrum didn’t descend on its own. Does anybody know what type of hypodermic painkiller would have been available to these men and was it legal? Does anybody know if these housecalling livestock doctors who’ve never been to college still exist?

Tangentially related but not a question: My great-grandfather and his father were both college educated medical doctors in 19th/early 20th century rural Alabama who treated animals as well as humans (which was pretty standard for rural docs in many places). My sister has a 110+ year old medicine bag of my great-grandfathers that contains vials of godknowswhat (powder stuck into a plaster like clump generations ago and the labels long since worn off) and a booklet in the doctor’s handwriting giving recipes for tinctures and medicines and the differing doses for children, adults and various animals. One medication calls for cocaine, which as a doctor he could purchase (though I’m not sure it was necessary to have a medical license to do so).

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PS- I emphasize the uneducated as presumably licensed vets would have access to a lot more medications and anesthesias and can write prescriptions for animals, etc., while again presumably the general public couldn’t do that and something powerful enough to help a horse in labor would surely be a controlled substance by human standards.

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Back then, companies that made veterinary medicines were a lot looser about who they would sell their products to.

If those ‘vets’ had been practicing for a while, they were probably already on the customer list of a veterinary supply company. So they probably just placed an order for anesthesia medications like they did for any of the other medications they bought from the supplier.

In fact, those supply houses were often a source of education for such ‘vets’. New medications were often featured in their catalogs, with a fair amount of detail about what conditions they treated, side effects, etc. Often they would send even more detailed material about the medication on request. Supplied by the manufacturer, and generally provided for free. Might even come with a coupon good for a discount on the first purchase of a supply of the medication.

These were all sales materials, but the manufacturers take some effort to make them educational for the readers. It’s to their advantage to educate vets about their new product, but they also need to be careful in explaining any side effects, etc. This ‘sales channel’ provided a fair amount of educating back then. It still does some of this, even now.

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People often forget that the government control of substances is an almost exponential curve. Fairly recently codeine was OTC in most countries, now Sudafed is behind the counter :rolleyes: