Mcgill Medicine

This second volume in the history of the McGill University Medical School begins a few years before the opening of the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1894 and traces the major developments in the institution's second half century. At the beginning of this period the McGill Faculty of Medicine was already ranked as among the best in North America, but its reputation had declined by World War I. During the next twenty years major reforms created new research laboratories, expanded library facilities, and continued modernization of the Royal Victoria Hospital. The Montreal Neurological Institute was opened, a children's hospital was established, and the Montreal General Hospital was expanded. McGill Medicine is also the story of the doctors and administrators who made all this happen: visionaries such as Principal Sir Arthur Currie and Dr C.F. Martin, who shepherded the concept of full-time faculty through the various approval processes of the school; Dr J.C. Meakins, who became, in 1924, the first full-time professor of medicine; and Dr Wilder Penfield, the founder and first director of the Montreal Neurological Institute. The book ends just before WWII, by which time McGill again held an enviable place among the world's medical teaching institutions.

Describes the origin and development of the McGill School of Medicine and the extraordinary staff whose progrssive ideas made it one of the best teaching and research centres in North America.

Medicine and Duty is the World War I memoir of Harold McGill, a medical officer in the 31st (Alberta) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force. McGill attempted to have his memoir published by Macmillan of Canada in 1935, but unfortunately, due to financial constraints, the company was not able to complete the publication. Decades later, editor Marjorie Norris came upon a draft of the manuscript in the Glenbow Archives and took it upon herself to resurrect McGills story. Norris's painstaking archival research and careful editing skills have brought back to light a gripping first-hand account of the 31st Battalion and, on a larger scale, of Canada's participation in World War I. A wealth of additional information, including extensive notes and excerpts from letters written "from the trenches," lends a new sense of immediacy and realism to the original memoir, and provides a fascinating, harrowing glimpse into the day-to-day life of Canadian soldiers during the Great War.

During his tenure as the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford from 1905-1919, Sir William Osler amassed a considerable library on the history of medicine and science. A Canadian native, Osler had studied at McGill University and decided to leave his collection of 7,600 items to its Faculty of Medicine. A catalogue, the Bibliotheca Osleriana, was compiled - a labour of love that took ten years to complete and involved W.W. Francis, R.H. Hill, and Archibald Malloch. Osler himself laid down the broad outlines of the catalogue and wrote many of the annotations.

Launched by healthcare providers in January 2018, the #aHand2Hold campaign confronted the Quebec government's practice of separating children from their families during medical evacuation airlifts, which disproportionately affected remote and northern Indigenous communities. Pediatric emergency physician Samir Shaheen-Hussain's captivating narrative of this successful campaign, which garnered unprecedented public attention and media coverage, seeks to answer lingering questions about why such a cruel practice remained in place for so long. In doing so it serves as an indispensable case study of contemporary medical colonialism in Quebec. Fighting for a Hand to Hold exposes the medical establishment's role in the displacement, colonization, and genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Through meticulously gathered government documentation, historical scholarship, media reports, public inquiries, and personal testimonies, Shaheen-Hussain connects the draconian medevac practice with often-disregarded crimes and medical violence inflicted specifically on Indigenous children. This devastating history and ongoing medical colonialism prevent Indigenous communities from attaining internationally recognized measures of health and social well-being because of the pervasive, systemic anti-Indigenous racism that persists in the Canadian public health care system - and in settler society at large. Shaheen-Hussain's unique perspective combines his experience as a frontline pediatrician with his long-standing involvement in anti-authoritarian social justice movements. Sparked by the indifference and callousness of those in power, this book draws on the innovative work of Indigenous scholars and activists to conclude that a broader decolonization struggle calling for reparations, land reclamation, and self-determination for Indigenous peoples is critical to achieve reconciliation in Canada.

Officially founded in 1819, the Montreal General Hospital is recognized as a pioneering institution in North America for the many discoveries in medical research made there and for its early association with the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University - the first medical school in Canada. Covering nearly 200 years of history, The General relates the story of the hospital from its origins and founding to the transition and aftermath of its incorporation into the McGill University Health Centre in 1997. With contributions that show the perspectives of clinicians, nurses, surgeons, professors, and administrators, chapters chronicle the history of particular departments and specializations of the hospital, including cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, obstetrics, emergency medicine, pathology, and radiology, as well as nursing, administration, and governance. Among the major turning points in the history of the hospital were the introduction of autopsy pathology by Sir William Osler, the debut of the electrocardiograph by Thomas Cotton in 1914, the discovery of a malignant tumour marker by Phil Gold and Samuel Freedman in 1965, its transformation from a community hospital serving anglophone Montreal to an internationally recognized academic centre during the 1950s and ’60s, and changes in governance due to the 1970 Quebec Medicare Act. Both a collective reminiscence and an extensive institutional history, The General is an engaging account of one prominent hospital’s development over nearly 200 years.

In his time the most famous physician in the world, Canadian-born William Osler (1849-1919) is still the best-known figure in the history of medicine. This new, definitive biography by Michael Bliss is the first full-scale life of Osler to appear since 1925. An award-winning medical historian, Bliss draws on many untapped sources to recreate Osler's life and medical times for a new generation of readers. Born at Bond Head, north of Toronto, Osler rose from obscurity to become the greatest medical teacher and writer in three countries. At Canada's McGill University, America's Johns Hopkins University, and finally as regius professor at Oxford, Osler was idolized by two generations of medical students and practitioners, for whom he came to personify the ideal doctor. His quest was to bring high standards and scientific methods into general practice in the medical world and to give teaching hospitals a solid place in the education of doctors. The publication of his book, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892), established him as the authority of modern medicine, a position he held well into the new century. Osler was revered as the high priest of the advent of twentieth-century medicine. In this fine biography, Michael Bliss animates the epic quality of Osler's life - not only in telling his personal story, but in setting that story against the dramatic backdrop of the coming of modern medicine. Winner of the Jason A. Hannah Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of Canada and the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine