>From:    Rebecca Williams <[log in to unmask]>
>...I wanted to see if someone could tell me the difference between having
>a vet who's a DVM ... and VMD?
 
I feel like a little kid - oh, oh, me, me, I call it, I got this one!!!!
 
The big difference - nothing important.  The little differences - a DVM is
a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (probably in Latin, but I have never looked
that closely at the diploma), whereas a VMD is Veterinariae Doctoris
Medicinae (maybe a Veterinary Medical Doctor, but I have never translated
the Latin) and thus a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (not Penn
State, which doesn't have a vet school) School of Veterinarian Medicine.
 
Why, you ask, does the UPenn Vet School (and no other school) foist this
"strange" degree on their graduates.  Years ago (around 1890 I think, but
don't quote me), a human physician at the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania (or what later became it) decided that the University needed a
vet school.  He went to a vet school in France (where professional
veterinary medicine was "founded") and obtained a vet degree on top of his
human medical degree, came home to Philadelphia and set up a vet school.
As he was a human physician with an MD, he and his colleagues decided that
veterinary graduates would have their educations based on the human medical
approach and therefore would be VMD's.
 
As an aside, they also made dental graduates DMD instead of DDS.
 
******************************
Sean D. Sawyer V'00
University of Pennsylvania
School of Veterinary Medicine
 
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[Posted in FML issue 2605]