Початки лікувальної справи тварин у Львові
Authors: Prusyazhnyuk V. 
Published: November 2017

Already in the 13th century. Lviv was not only a political, strategic, but also an economic center with developed craft and trade. It is known that a medieval city could not exist without the presence of craftsmen of such basic professions as tailors, shoemakers, bakeries, blacksmiths, cutters and potters. In the oldest city book that came to us, written after the fire of 1381, it is mentioned a lot of occupations and names of Lviv artisans, among them 8 cutters, 2 blacksmiths. According to incomplete data from 1405–1426, in Lviv there were artisans of 36 occupations, including 14 cutters, 11 blacksmiths. During the XV – first half of the XVII century, Lviv was the artisan, educational and cultural center of Ukraine due to the fact that it stood at the intersection of major European roads and was a well-known market center for sales, exchange and commodity production in Central and Southern Europe. Confirmation of this is the discovery in 1439 of the religious-educational society «Lviv Brotherhood». The first schools for the training of medical specialists were family, that is, family schools. Later, the schools became known as workshops. In the 14th century the workshops were independent higher educational institutions and were not part of the universities, even in Europe, as it was regulated by the statutes of universities. Ukrainian workshops later started out academies and universities and had the attributes of higher educational institutions: statute, flag, seal, ciches, icons, which testified the place and importance of the school (shop) in the life of the country. The prince (king) gave the certificate of the opening of the school. The statute of the work shop was extended to members of the association: a student, an apprentice and a master. Workshops  statutes were legal documents and often were not changed much for centuries. Medieval archival documents of the XIV-first half of the XVII century (workshops statutes, books on current affairs, books of the city authorities) quite fully reflect the Lviv  workshop structure not only quantitatively but also professionally. The two oldest statutes of the blacksmith shop in 1529 and 1558 are stored in the Lviv State Historical Archives. In Lviv in the fourteenth century there were four, and in the year 1425 there were already 10 work shops: blacksmiths, saddles, cutters, shoemakers, shopkeepers, bakeries, furriers, limars, gardens and brewers. In 1579 there were already 20 work shops, and in the first half of the XVII century the number of work shops in Lviv reached 30, which united over 500 masters of 133 specialties. In the future, the blacksmiths-conquerors were engaged in the treatment of not only horses but other animals. Particularly in the fight against poisonous animal diseases, they enriched the experience of medical practice, which was passed on to subsequent generations. However, all of these were educational institutions, in which a small number of qualified medical specialists trained, and the majority of the population and animals were served by  healers, bloodshed, blacksmiths, and veterinary doctors. Opening in 1457 in the blacksmith work shop of veterinary school and horses forging was the result of the rise of trade and economic, cultural and educational ties in the medieval city, which was contributed to the birth and development of the work shop structure that gave the beginning of a medical case, and later – the birth of veterinary education in Galicia.