Janina Maria Sokołowska (1945): the first woman veterinary surgeon from the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, Edinburgh

Abstract

Internationally, almost all the students who qualified as veterinary surgeons prior lo 1900 were men. However, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century women were expressing their wishes to be similarly qualified. One of the first women to achieve that ambition was Stephania Kruszevska, from Warsaw, Poland, who acquired her veterinary degree in Zurich in 1889. ln Scotland, in 1894, William Williams of the New Veterinary College, Elm Row, Edinburgh accepted the apptication or Aleen Cust (1868-1937). She enrolled in the college under the name A.l. Custance to study veterinary medicine. Despite examination entitlement impediments placed in her way by the lawyers of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Williams gave her a testimonial in 1900 at the end of her coursework in his college, expressing his satisfaction that she was now a qualified veterinary surgeon.