Rubber veterinarians

The first commercially successful pneumatic tire was developed in 1888 in Belfast by the Scottish veterinarian John Boyd Dunlop primarily to improve the riding comfort of bicycles. Dunlop also showed, albeit qualitatively, that his air-inflated pneumatic took less effort to rotate than did the solid rubber tires in use at that time. His qualitative tests were the first known rolling resistance experiments on pneumatic tires. Due to this significant reduction in rolling loss, many professional cyclists in Britain and Ireland adopted air-inflated tires for their bicycles by the early 1890s. Pneumatics for the nascent automobile industry soon followed. 

Rubber gained worldwide importance with the invention of the air-filled or pneumatic tires by a Scotsman, John Dunlop, in 1888. He had a successful veterinarian practice in Belfast. In his off time he worked to improve the ride of his son s tricycle. His invention happened at the right time. The automobile was emerging and the air-filled tires offered a gentler ride. Thus was begun the tire industry. 

Another Scotsman, named John B. Dunlop, replaced solid rubber bicycle tires by air-filled rubber tires in 1887. Bicycle and automobile riders would not have been able to ride comfortably without the reinvention of the pneumatic tire by this Scottish veterinarian. 

According to case reports, the leading causes of recalcitrant allergic dermatitis in veterinarians have been (1) antibiotics, such as penicillins (mostly penethamate), spiramycin, streptomycin, tylosin, nitrofurantoin and neomycin (Hjorth 1967 Hjorth and Roed-Petersen 1980 Rudzki et al. 1982 Falk et al. 1985 Barbera and de la Cuadra 1989 Caraffini et al. i994)> (2) obstetric work, primarily on cows (Hjorth 1967 Prahl and Roed-Petersen 1979 Hjorth and Roed-Petersen 1980 Rudzki et al. 1982 Degreff et al. 1984 Kalveram et al. 1986 Roger et al. 1995) and (3) rubber... 

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