John McFadyean: The Scottish Principal Who Modernized British Veterinary Science

Who was John McFadyean?

John McFadyean was born on 17 June 1853 at Barrachan in Wigtownshire, Scotland, the son of Andrew McFadyean. He went to the Ewart Institute at Newton Stewart and then worked on his father's farm for a few years. He entered the Dick Veterinary College in Edinburgh in October 1874 and graduated in April 1876, as a biographical reference page summarizes.

He was appointed lecturer in anatomy at the Dick college the following academic year and wrote the standard texts The Anatomy of the Horse in 1884 and The Osteology and Arthrology of Domesticated Animals in 1887.

How did he become Britain's first veterinary bacteriologist?

In the 1880s McFadyean's interests moved to bacteriology and pathology, and he became Britain's first veterinary bacteriologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1888. That same year he founded the Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics.

A 1938 Nature tribute notes that he edited the journal almost alone for its first fifty volumes, and that a jubilee issue in December 1937 honored the work. The Nature piece lists his research subjects: tuberculosis control, contagious abortion and glanders in farm animals, the cause and occurrence of Johne's disease in Great Britain, and the finding that horse sickness virus is filterable.

Principal of the Royal Veterinary College

McFadyean became a lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College in London in 1892 and its Principal in 1894. He held the post until he retired in 1927, 33 years in which the college grew from a trade school toward a research institution.

King Edward VII knighted him in 1905. In 1906 he is credited with first isolating the Campylobacter bacteria, a finding the same reference page links to later advances in public health.

Anthrax, tuberculosis and cattle disease

McFadyean is remembered in the veterinary literature for work on anthrax and bovine tuberculosis, two diseases that dominated livestock health in his era. Library catalogs list a published survey of his contributions to the study of tuberculosis, and the Nature tribute names tuberculosis control first among his research subjects.

Cattle tuberculosis mattered doubly because it could reach people through milk. Stewart Stockman, who became chief veterinary officer in Britain and was McFadyean's son-in-law, later helped frame the Tuberculosis Order of 1925.

Family, honors and legacy

McFadyean married Mara Eleanor Walley in 1883, daughter of Thomas Walley, who was Principal of the Dick college from 1874 to 1894. His daughter Ethel married Sir Stewart Stockman. McFadyean died in London on 1 February 1941. The McFadyean building at the RVC, now home to the London BioScience Innovation Centre, was named in his honor.

A JAVMA News article titled Exacting researcher brought profession into modern age, indexed at PubMed, offers a further assessment of his place in veterinary history.

Why McFadyean matters to cattle people

Every herd test, necropsy and milk safety rule on a cattle operation draws on the habits he helped establish: diagnose with the microscope, publish the result and teach it. For more on cattle health history, see farm.FM's ranching section and a farm.FM story on cattle disease and veterinarians.