Charles Vial de Sainbel

Charles Vial de Sainbel or Saint Bel (1753–1793) was a French veterinary surgeon who settled in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

He early displayed so marked a fondness for studying the organisation of animals that at the age of sixteen he began to attend the veterinary school, where M. Péan was then the professor, and in 1772 he gained the prize offered by the Royal Society of Medicine, with an essay On the Grease or Watery Sores in the Legs of Horses.

In 1774 an extensive epizootic raged among the horses in many provinces of France, and Sainbel was ordered to choose five students from the veterinary college at Lyons to accompany him in his provincial visits, and to assist in stopping the outbreak of disease.

He afterwards returned to Paris under the patronage of the Prince de Lambesc, and was appointed one of the equerries to Louis XVI, and chief of the manège at the academy of Lyons, posts which he retained for three years.

Hitherto, owing to the ignorance of cattle-disease, the loss of animal life had been very great, and farriers had depended upon antiquated or empirical treatises such as those of Gervase Markham.

Like all innovators, Sainbel had much to contend against; but the lines which he laid down were faithfully followed in England and in Scotland, and led from the merest empiricism to the scientific position now held by veterinary science.