William Youatt

William Youatt (1776–1847) was an English veterinary surgeon.

Youatt was the son of a non-conformist minister. He was educated for the nonconformist ministry, and undertook ministerial and scholastic duties in London. He was in Chichester, Sussex by 1803, when he married Mary Payne on the 12th of December at All Saints Chichester. At some uncertain date, in 1812 or 1813, he joined Delabere Pritchett Blaine (1768–1848) in conducting a veterinary infirmary in Wells Street, Oxford Street. This partnership continued for a little more than twelve years, when the business passed into Youatt's hands.

In 1828 Youatt began to deliver a series of lectures and demonstrations to veterinary students at his private residence and infirmary in Nassau Street. These were independent of, and to some extent designed to supplement, the teaching of the London Veterinary College. From the end of 1830 these lectures were delivered at University College London. In 1835 they were abandoned, but instead Youatt continued for four years to print a monthly series of written lectures in the Veterinarian, a professional monthly which he had started in 1828. In this venture he was soon joined by William Percivall, veterinary surgeon to the 1st life guards. This journal, which was still in existence in 1900, was kept alive in the early years only by Youatt's dogged perseverance, at a time when even his co-editor, Percivall, wished to abandon the venture.

In 1838 the Royal Agricultural Society of England had been founded under the title of the English Agricultural Society. Youatt was one of the original members, and was placed on the committee of management. Here he obtained the appointment of a veterinary committee, of which he was appointed chairman, and attempted with considerable success to draw closer the connection between the Society and the Royal Veterinary College.

Owing partly to his extensive literary work, partly to attacks of gout, Youatt's practice had devolved more and more on his assistant, Ainsley, on whose death in 1844 the establishment in Nassau Street was broken up. Youatt, though now standing at the head of his profession, was not a registered member of it; he objected to the constitution of the examining body of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, which consisted chiefly of physicians and surgeons. When, however, in 1844, this body was remodelled, and composed chiefly of veterinarians, Youatt, being then nearly seventy years old, presented himself for examination. The difficulty occasioned by his refusal to answer a professional question rather impertinently put to him was overruled by the chairman, who handed him his diploma on the spot. Youatt's daughter, Elizabeth, was to later marry the organisation's secretary.

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