The Museum of the veterinary school of Alfort is one of the oldest France

Since November 1, 2008, after multiple work of renovation, the Museum of the national veterinary school of Alfort was re-opened to the public. It is mainly the regional tourist pole loops of the Marne, structure binding partners public (State, Ile-de-France region, Department of the Val-de-Marne), which provided financial support to the project of the curator of the Museum, Christophe Degueurce, to develop a tourist site dedicated to the domestic animal.

Indeed, it had become urgent to find new financing to this Museum, which had not experienced work since 1967, and saw some of its collections to deteriorate.

The Museum of the veterinary school of Alfort is one of the oldest France. Its creation dates back to 1766 and met a professional need for training of veterinary students. At the same time, he acquired a dimension pedagogical and cultural, by becoming a place of animal knowledge open to the public. After the uproar of the revolutionary period, where the Museum was several times threatened with deletion, opened the period of the "cabinet of collection", 1828-1902. The public was more accepted, the cabinet being organized solely for the purpose of teaching. It was in 1902 that place truly took the character of modern Museum, when was created an area of 700 m2 to allow the general public. After 1991 the Museum experienced a resurgence of celebrity with a communication policy centred on the famous exonerate of Fragonard, real bodies of men and animals were prepared and mummified at the Alfort school between 1766 and 1771.

Success with the public

If Centennial tradition more than twice of the Museum in fact a high place of veterinary knowledge, why the constant success met with great public notoriety in the Japan and the Anglo-Saxon countries

Perhaps because is looking a little more closely, after observed parts of animal anatomy emplies showcases plaster, straw or real flesh and bone, other teachings, not only purely veterinary, appear.

For Christophe Degueurce, "it is more than a museum on animal anatomy, he also teaches life people in France of 18th century to the present."Because behind the spinal columns of cattle, distorted by the weight of the plough, there is the harshness of peasant labour in the countryside of the Ancien Régime. Holes in the skulls of the horses show, from the ravages of certain bacteria in the 19th century, it was impossible to eliminate.

But, more generally, the attractiveness and the interest of the Museum must no doubt largely to the image it refers to relations between human beings live: contrary to what said Descartes, men and animals are not in hierarchical reports and are each notable in their "respective ecological niche", in the words of Christophe Degueurce.

If man is a being a bit "other", with a growing control of its natural environment, many animals are distinguished by exceptional faculties, such as the smell of the dog or the strength of the horse.

Thus, human and animal bodies are sometimes exposed in the same Windows, as this is the case for one of Fragonard exonerate, "The rider", representing dissected a human and a horse. The idea of Fragonard, anatomist of the 18th century, was to represent the unity of the animal world, highlighting the physical similarities between human beings live.

A very marked time, France, by religion Catholic that "man is made in the image of God", the approach was shocked. However, they were few in number to denounce, as do some today, the "morbid" of the exonerate. Since its reopening at the end of last year, the Museum of Alfort boasts home more of 10,000 visitors.

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