SickKids. The History of The Hospital for Sick Children by David Wright

Abstract

172 BOOK REVIEWS the management of specific diseases. The reader will be impressed by the high quality of the research and the urgent import of the findings. Much of the history has been assembled from relatively inaccessible sources, some of which are in danger of being lost, in all the relevant languages. At the same time, there is the strong sense that there remains much to consider with respect to the future of vaccination. MICHAEL BENNETT UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA David Wright, SickKids. The History of The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). ISBN: 978-1-4426-4723-7 (HB). B&W illustrations and tables. xiv + 462pp. Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children is internationally renowned and claims to be the largest children’s hospital in the world (p.4). This new history, by eminent medical historian Professor David Wright, is attractively designed and illustrated. It reflects the generous resources allocated to it, including research assistance. Wright closely collaborated with the hospital (which has copyright in the book) and had, as he acknowledges with gratitude, ‘unfettered access to hospital resources’ (p.xi). He notes one irritant that is all too common for historians of medicine: having to adhere to ethical protocols designed for clinical research. Hence his sixteen oral history interviews had to be anonymous regardless of the interviewees’ wishes. The hospital admitted its first patient in 1875 and, faced with the task of summarising 140 years, Wright adopted the creative approach of writing chapters around key issues. Some detail falls between the cracks, but the key themes are well explored. The chosen themes mostly allow a focus on patients and, to a lesser extent, the multiple communities which make up a hospital’s culture. One fascination with these themes is that, apart from local detail, most equally apply to any large public hospital in the western world during the same period. Thehospital’sinitialyearswasdominatedbyElizabethMcMaster. She is ‘widely regarded’ (p.31) as the Hospital’s founder, and saw it as a ‘religious mission’ (p.45). She and her Ladies Committee were eventually ousted by John Ross Robertson. A newspaper tycoon, the word ‘tyrant’ seems unavoidable when describing him. Robertson’s Health & History ● 19/2 ● 2017 173 control of the hospital was enforced by ‘enormous’ donations (p.62), although the key source of finance was, Wright points out, the government. In the mid-century, the hospital was dominated by Dr Alan Brown, one of the ‘god-doctors’ during the era of more ‘scientific’ and very patriarchal medicine. As so often happened, his domination lasted too long, eventually resulting in retrograde policies especially for women and the psycho-social welfare of patients. Part of the interest of the hospital in the early- to mid-twentieth century was its location in the poorest part of Toronto. The hospital accordingly had a major role assisting refugees, notably Eastern European Jews. Its employment policies, however, were both antiSemitic and racist until more recent decades. Financially, the hospital benefited enormously from its entrepreneurship in developing a popular baby food, and in various ways from its close connection to the University of Toronto.As in other postcolonial societies, Canada’s aboriginal population is the major exception to its trope of progress. Wright’s thematic chapters are roughly chronological. They range from treating children with deformities requiring surgery, the hospital’s commitment to providing safe milk, and the polio epidemic (symbolised by the ‘iron lungs’ which Wright suggests had ‘relatively little impact’ [p.161]), to more recent developments in genetic medicine and e-health. Other chapters focus on issues indirectly affecting treatment, notably the severe restrictions on visiting children who were public patients (those with tuberculosis, he writes, could endure hospitalisation, and thus little contact with their families, for four years!); the ‘Rabbit-Warren’ of the buildings (Chapter 9); and, in the 1980s, the building of the hospital’s renowned atrium, an architectural statement of its entering a new era. The chapter themes become more complex as the evidence base grows with the hospital, and diverse threads—such as Chapter 11’s medical insurance and the ‘sisterhood of nursing’—don’t always merge well together. The recent corporatisation of the hospital is more lightly touched upon, as is...