We were pleased by your article on the important work of zoo vets (From sleeping lions to spitting snakes: a year in the life of London zoo vets, 19 April). Our father, Calvert Appleby, worked as a vet at Edinburgh zoo from 1948 to 1959, before moving to the Royal Veterinary College in London. His first few years were as a PhD student of veterinary pathology with the Dick veterinary school while also active in the zoo, before being fully employed there from 1951, so he might have claimed to predate Oliver Graham-Jones, who your article says became “Britain’s first dedicated zoo vet” at London zoo that year.
For these pioneering vets, some animal physiology was unknown, so experimental treatments were necessary. A crocodile with an abscess was anaesthetised with chloroform (via a huge cotton-wool ball on a long pole), but sadly didn’t survive. It wasn’t known then that reptiles couldn’t cope with chloroform. Appleby later received an award from a learned society for his pioneering work on reptiles and amphibians. He had many other stories, often successes, but also including the huge efforts made to move a sick camel indoors one winter’s day, only for the camel to stagger to its feet and return to the bottom of the paddock.
