Conventional Veterinary Medicine vs Holistic Veterinary Medicine

There is always lots of talk and discussion about the difference between conventional veterinary medicine and holistic veterinary medicine. Conventional medicine has been around for many years whereas holistic medicine is recently becoming a big thing that pet owners are now turning to. Although the two are working towards the same goal, to better an animal’s life, the two are very different. There is no real research on when exactly conventional veterinarian medicine started. We do know who the father of veterinary medicine is, this would be Dr. Claude Bourgelat. He founded the first modern school of veterinary medicine in Lyon, France in 1862. (Baker, 1992-2013 ). Holistic medicine is just now starting to become popular with pet owners, as they are turning to new ways to care for their pet when they think conventional medicine is too harsh. Conventional veterinary medicine often times does not look at the whole of the animal. It’s often about symptoms and treating them. If your cat is vomiting they may prescribe centrine to stop it or if there is diarrhea, a medication that is synthetically made is prescribed for that. When symptoms persist even with meds then veterinarians will become more aggressive with medications to find a cure. Usually beginning with blood work, x-rays, urine samples and so forth. With synthetically made medicines, you sometimes run the risk of having side effects, and at times the Vet could possibly misdiagnose an illness and prescribe the wrong medication for the animal. Holistic medicine tends to look at the animal as a whole, and not just look at the symptoms. Instead of looking at just the parts of the body that are sick, they look at the whole body of the animal, and attempts to restore health in the emotional, mental, and physical states. Holistic veterinarians believe that there is toxic stress from many things in an animal’s life. Whether it be from environmental or nutritional stresses, they believe the whole animal should