Editors' Note: 100 years and counting

Isn't it funny that as Veterinary Medicine ages, it seems to get younger? This Dorian Gray-like magic comes from a long line of editors who stuck by Veterinary Medicine's core mission to provide practical clinical advice to enhance patients'—and clients'—lives. The journal's commitment to providing useful, reliable medical content has endured for a century—and grown even stronger.

Of course, it's been a century of dramatic change. When Veterinary Medicine launched in 1905, veterinarians, with rare exception, treated large animals, primarily horses, and the journal mainly dealt with equine diseases. When transportation shifted from horses to automobiles, the need for "horse doctors" diminished while the need for large-animal veterinarians intensified. Through the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Veterinary Medicine covered the latest on eliminating such livestock diseases as Bang's disease, bovine tuberculosis, and hog cholera.

But even as early as the 1920s, small-animal hospitals began emerging in U.S. cities. By 1933, the year the American Animal Hospital Association was founded, Veterinary Medicine had already published special issues devoted to small-animal medicine. Soon after World War II, the public increasingly sought medical care for their dogs and, later, their cats and exotic animals. The veterinary profession, and this journal, responded. Today, more than 50,000 practitioners exclusively or primarily care for small animals.

In the next 100 years, we'll no doubt see many more changes in the profession. But what won't change will be your and your successors' desire to prevent and relieve animal suffering. Veterinary Medicine will continue to be there to help make this critically important work easier. As we enter our second century of publishing, our commitment is to continue to provide what you need to practice excellent medicine—today and tomorrow.

To celebrate this anniversary year, we'll bring you interviews with outstanding leaders in the profession; excerpts from vintage editorial; and, in April, a special supplement that highlights 10 social and scientific milestones in the last century of veterinary medicine. And, as always, you'll continue to find peer-reviewed clinical information written by the finest in their fields.

So thank you for reading. It's our honor—and it has been for a century—to be part of a community of such caring, devoted professionals.