[From animal automatons to scientific questioning--reflections on the development of veterinary medicine in the 18th century].

Descartes wanted to prove the cosmos to be a machine which God had made run. The animals, too, were machines which functioned like robots. In the 18th century the animal machine of Descartes was being discussed and eventually negated. The animal was considered a being with a soul and an intellect. Therefore an animal was to be looked at as a creation of God-nearly like a human being. Reimarus (About the animals' soul, 1760) and Germershausen (About sheep breeding, 1789), tried to be fair to animals while handling them. They negated the machine model of Descartes but accepted his scientific language. They transferred his vocabulary into their treatises. In this way they installed this new vocabulary into their scientific terminology--an important requirement for the instutitionalisation of veterinary medicine.