Musings on the future direction of One Health, William Hunting and tuberculosis, while listening to blackbirds sing.

Had the term ‘One Health’ been in use 130 years ago, it is highly likely that this journal’s first editor, William Hunting, would have used it in the first edition of The Veterinary Record .The issue, published in July 1888, includes a report of a meeting of the Scottish Metropolitan Veterinary Medical Society at which there had been a lengthy discussion about the prevalence and implications of bovine tuberculosis (TB) in the 300 or so dairies in Edinburgh and its suburbs.It had only been a few years earlier, in 1882, that Robert Koch had reported his discovery that tuberculosis was caused by a bacillus;1 yet the discussion clearly indicated the concern of the society’s members over the transmission of bovine TB to children drinking the milk from the dairies. Given that both the medical and veterinary professions previously believed that heredity and environment were the major factors causing tuberculosis, Koch’s discovery represented a paradigm shift in understanding the causation of the disease and those present at the Scottish meeting believed that the government had the power under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts to intervene and control bovine TB to prevent its transmission to people. However, it would take another 70 years or so before the risk of bovine TB spreading from infected cattle to people was finally solved.In 2005, in response to a spate of emerging diseases at the turn of the 21st century, and in the tradition of William Hunting, Martin Alder and Graham Easton, editors of Vet Record and The BMJ , had the foresight to recognise the importance of drawing attention to the concept of One Medicine (in its transition to One Health), a tradition that has been continued in this celebratory edition by Adele Waters and Fiona Godlee current editors of Vet …