Ethnoveterinary Medicine

Ethnoveterinary medicine treats traditional, non-Western practices of animal healing as legitimate veterinary knowledge and seeks to validate them rather than dismiss them. Its traditions include Chinese veterinary acupuncture and herbal medicine, Tibetan veterinary medicine, and animal applications of Ayurveda from India, among many others practiced around the world. Some of these traditions carry historical records stretching back thousands of years, documented in sources as varied as the Jewish Old Testament and Talmud and Sri Lankan palm leaf records of animal treatments. Since the colonial era, scientists have often recorded indigenous animal health knowledge before introducing Western veterinary technology into a region.