Archival pdf documents for printing
A Year of Robust Donations
The pandemic has led veterinarians to clean out their homes and offices, and we attracted some fabulous books and artifacts this year. Several major book donations came to us from across the country, and a major cache of artifacts was gathered from a Minneapolis veterinary hospital.
We completed the preliminary editing of Dr. Dale Sorensen’s book-length history of the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine, a work which we hope to publish in the near future.
Visitors to our website will see improvements, with more updates about our work. We are working to make the site a source for more complete information about the history of veterinary medicine in Minnesota.
This year we learned that the first female vet in the state came in 1944, slightly before the arrival of the previously recognized first woman, Joan Parent. We have a brief description of this in the following pages, with more detail on our website in a section called “news and events.”
We thank Dr. Peter Poss for his service to the museum. Dr. Poss served as president from 2010 to 2021, and guided the museum’s fundraising efforts and general activities. We also thank Dr. Carl Jessen, treasurer from 2005 to 2021, and Dr. Tom Fletcher, webmaster from 2003 to 2021.
Minnesota's First Female Veterinarian
For decades, Dr. Joan Parent of Foley – who came in 1945 from Ontario – has been known as Minnesota’s first female veterinarian. But we recently learned that Dr. Louise Ann Scherger, a Kansas native who received her veterinary degree from Kansas State in September, 1944, came to Minneapolis and practiced from October 1, 1944, to January 16, 1945 with the Morgan Animal Hospital at 2544 Lyndale Avenue South, living in an apartment above the clinic.
In 1945, Scherger moved on to Nebraska and Wisconsin. She married Charles M. Lombard in 1948 and changed her surname to Lombard. She earned a Ph.D. in pathology from the University of Wisconsin in 1950 and continued her career as a pathologist. She died in California in 1987.
Morgan’s employment records show the dates during which Scherger worked for him and the amount of pay. They also reveal that she was living in a small apartment above the clinic. These records were among the material gathered from the Lyndale Animal Hospital this fall.
Dr. Ora B. Morgan
DR. ORA B. MORGAN , a 1914 graduate of Kansas City Veterinary College, brought Dr. Scherger to Minneapolis. Morgan’s Lyndale Avenue hospital, built in 1936, is thought to be the first building in the city designed and built as a small animal clinic. It still stands, operated today as the Lyndale Animal Hospital.
THIS FALL , the museum was able to acquire some superb artifacts from Dr. Morgan’s practice that had survived in the clinic building. We also made contact with Morgan’s grandson, James Viken, Ph.D., who gave us some reminisensces about his grandfather.
“Writing My Own Obituary”: A Request from Dr. Evelyn Groth Townsend
Q: I would like to know how many students graduated from the College of Veterinary Medicine before 1965. I am writing my own obituary and want to include the percent of women graduated by that date. I was one of three in the class of ‘65.
A: According to our count there were a total of 630 graduates from 1951 through 1965. Twelve of them were women, giving a figure of 1.9 percent.
2021 Acquisitions at the Veterinary Museum
At right (Top to Bottom):
Photo of Dr. Louise Ann Scherger, provided by Leslie Ann Gentry.
Morgan's employment records show the dates during which Scherger worked for him and the amount of pay. They also reveal that she was living in a small apartment above the hospital. These records were among the material gathered from the Lyndale Animal Hospital this fall.
Photo of Ora Morgan, donated by James Viken.
Artifacts recently collected from Lyndale Animal Hospital at the invitation of owner Dr. David Grindle including Morgan's 1914 diploma from Kansas City Veterinary College.
The Gentleman’s New Pocket Farrier, Philadelphia, 1846, from a large donation of books by Lanny Krause, D.V.M. of Summerton, So. Carolina.
A recipe book kept by Dr. Guy A. Ottinger of Jamestown N.D., donated by his granddaughter, Ann Hohenhaus, D.V.M. of New York city.
Pharmaceuticals donated by Byron B. Emswiller, D.V.M., M.BA., J.D., of La Quinta, California; X-ray unit donated by Wayne Weiland, D.V.M., of Holcombe, Wisconsin.
Photo of August Mueller, on his dairy farm in Sibley County, donated by his niece, Barb Mueller (as a state representative, August Mueller promulgated the bill that established the College of Veterinary Medicine in 1947).
Written by Paul Maravelas
