PETER L. TWOHIG. Labour in the Laboratory: Medical Laboratory Workers in the Maritimes, 1900-1950. (Studies in the History of Medicine, Health, and Society, number 23.) Ithaca, N.Y.: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2005. Pp. xvi, 241. $70.00

Abstract

This short book (166 pages of actual text) expands the medical gaze to include laboratory workers in the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on the Maritimes, in particular the Pathological Institute in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Bureau of Laboratories in Saint John, New Brunswick, but including labs in the rest of Canada, Peter L. Twohig has written a readable and fascinating study examining what was largely a female work force. In addition to the introductory essay, there are five chapters, the first two tracing the development of the laboratories, followed by three focusing specifically on the workers: who they were; the work they did; and how they were recruited, their workplace mobility, and the wages paid. The gendered aspects of the workers and their responsibilities are seen in the division between hospital lab technicians, mostly female, and university medical science lab technicians, almost all male. The situation of the women is familiar. If unmarried and living with family, a worker's wage reflected the assumption that she did not “need” money in order to live; if she lost that familial connection, wages increased but only to insure that she would stay at her job. More fascinating are the male laboratory workers at Dalhousie University who suffered a similar fate but for different reasons. University officials simply could not see the jobs that young men did in the labs as a career. Men were expected to leave when they married and find a more fitting, better-paying job. Rather than pay married men a family wage and thus keep them as workers, University officials were willing to go through the expense of training replacements. Notions of what a married man's work should be preempted financial efficiency.