Page 48 - VHSA - Onderstepoort 100 Years - Part 3

OND
ERSTEPOORT 100
Pathology laboratory in the Old Main Building, 1908
138
years since the inauguration of the Bacteriological Laboratory in 1908, a total of 9649 post-mortem examinations had been performed comprising 5339 horses, mules and donkeys, 1048 cattle, 303 sheep and 231 pigs and ostriches, or about three a day. In addition, a demonstration necropsy of a horse that had died that morning was performed by G. van de Wall de Kock and D. Kehoe showed lantern slides of pathological lesions to those present. It appears that the 1917 post-mortem hall
was also used for functions other than its intended use as Thelma Gutsche in her book on the life and times of Theiler mentions that on 13 April 1917 (which was Theiler’s last day at Onderstepoort, i.e. the first time that he retired before reinstatement on 1 April 1920 as Director of Veterinary Education and Research) the whole staff assembled in the post-mortem hall to bid him farewell.
The present Pathology building of the Institute was taken into use in 1923 and is a very spacious double-storey building which was designed to accommodate the 1917 post-mortem hall for use by students and staff, and student anatomy and comparative ana- tomy dissection halls, several laboratories for, inter alia, the preparation and staining of tissue sections for histopathological study, two student lecture rooms, a num-
ber of offices and a pathology museum. The first pathologist to be appointed at the Veterinary Bacteriological Laboratory in 1908 was a Swiss, K.F. Meyer (1884 -1974). One can imagine the mostly unfamiliar nature of the diseases with which he was confronted. These would have included, amongst others, East Coast fever, redwater, anaplasmosis, anthrax, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, heartwater, glanders,
PART 3
History of Individual Disciplines
1908-2008
Years