Veterinary Medicine Mural and The Gentle Doctor

Jerome Thompson

Veterinary Medicine Mural, 1935-38

Soon after the completion of the Dairy Industry sculptures in 1935, Petersen moved on to a new commission. The rapidity with which this project followed suggests that others on the college faculty were as eager as President Hughes to raise the cultural and artistic profile of Iowa State. This time it came from the Veterinary Medicine College, headed by Charles H. Stange (1909-1936), who proposed a large relief mural to be placed on an outdoor wall in what was then called the Veterinary Quadrangle (now Lagomarcino Hall). After Stange’s death in 1936, his successor as Dean, Charles Murray, continued the college’s support for the sculpture project; Petersen made portrait busts of both men.

The subject of the Veterinary Medicine mural was the current state of animal science and its benefit to humankind. Assisted by the research of his wife, the artist proposed a continuous scene of men engaged with various animals in “the protection of human health by guarding animal health through the development of vaccines.” Five incidences showing veterinarians are found in the mural, four of them containing animals and one referring to their tissues in the work of veterinary scientists. Charlotte Petersen wrote a description of the scenes in her husband’s mural.

“Men with cow. Protection of the food animal by inspection for the recognition of contagious diseases, specifically foot-and-mouth disease. Since this is a transmissible disease to humans it also shows human protection. Kneeling figures working with a calf. The protection of the human from small-pox, by vaccine prepared from the calf. The protection of the human through the production of diphtheria and tetanus anti-toxin through the blood of the horse. Figure with hog. The protection of the food animal by vaccination against hog cholera. The protection of both humans and animals with rabies vaccine prepared from the spinal cord of rabbits and sheep which have been inoculated with the brain tissue of infected dogs. The figure at extreme right is that of a scientist making microscopic examination of the brain tissue for rabies.”

As always, Petersen prepared for the final sculpture by making many sketches, drawings and models, working his way through a variety of ideas until he understood each form and could deal with it from small to large scale. He also faced again the challenge of having to fire this massive 26-foot panel in Professor Cox’s kiln at the Ceramic Engineering department, this time in forty-four sections. The work took over a year and was installed on a brick wall in the Veterinary Quadrangle in 1938. When the Veterinary Medicine College moved to a new building in 1976, the panel was reinstalled on a concrete wall near the entrance.

Adapted from: Lea Rosson DeLong “Christian Petersen’s Midwest”, 2004.

The Gentle Doctor, 1935-36

The symbol of the Veterinary Medicine College at Iowa State University today and of the veterinary profession overall is a sculpture Petersen began after he designed the large relief panel. In adding this figure, it is possible that he had in mind a tribute to Dean Charles Stange, D.V.M., head of the Veterinary College, who had been an early supporter of his work, but who had died before the Veterinary Medicine Mural was finished. It is also possible he wished to create a more complex installation that would present a gentler, more humane picture of veterinarians, to contrast with the purposeful and clinical struggle of the scientists in the panel. Petersen had solicited the opinion of a colleague who had commented that his Vet panel seemed to contain “too much pain.” Petersen may have felt that a statue of a sympathetic doctor concerned only with the tender, but competent care of a suffering animal would correct that impression.

The studies show how many ideas Petersen considered before he settled on the simple, concentrated composition of a standing doctor with a mother dog and her pup. Although Dr. Stange was probably the inspiration for the statue, two veterinary students modeled for aspects of the figure: L.M. Forland was asked to stand holding a pillow as if it were a puppy, and William Born held a book while Petersen modeled the hands of the figure. Both men graduated from Iowa State and were practicing veterinarians for many years.

When the new Veterinary college building (now Frederick Douglass Patterson Hall) was erected in 1976, this statue accompanied the panel into a new installation, although the relationship between the two sculptures which Petersen established was changed. Over the years, the terra cotta of the statue had begun to show the wearing effects of its constant exposure to the weather. After being restored, The Gentle Doctor was placed permanently inside the Small Animal Clinic for its protection while a bronze was cast to serve in the outdoor installation at the Veterinary Medicine College.

Adapted from: Lea Rosson DeLong “Christian Petersen’s Midwest,” 2004.

I got my first dog in first grade from Dr. Robert Getty, a Veterinary faculty member who went to our church. Asta was an Irish terrier and Dr. Getty was the only person raising this breed of dog in Iowa at the time. Asta was a companion until just after my senior year in high school when she died. In her early years we took her to the Vet School when she needed shots or checkups. I remember looking at the murals in the old Vet Quad, but it was the Gentle Doctor that I always remember. In the early 1990s we had a Scottish terrier, Haggis, that needed a special surgery and was referred to the Vet School at the new location south of campus. Seeing the Gentle Doctor in its new location was a comfort in knowing Haggis was going to be in great hands.

-Jerome Thompson