Doing Good: The Life of Toronto's General Hospital by J.T.H. Connor (review)

humanities 421 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 peoples; they may have been unenlightened, according to today=s standards, but their inspiration was charity. McNally=s statements are surprisingly harsh and border on polemic, as though he were angry at those about whom he writes; he states, for example, of Joseph Brabant, a secular priest from the American College at Louvain who spent thirty years among the Native people on the west coast of Vancouver Island: >Initially, as the first European to live among them for generations, his major contribution to the Hesquiat ... was to introduce smallpox.= Archbishop Seghers, the man who longed to give his life for the Native people (for he too was imbued with the Jansenistic spirituality of sacrifice, so repugnant to Father McNally) was murdered because of his foolishness in choosing to be accompanied by an unbalanced Irish guide. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all is McNally=s use of the word >holocaust= to describe the catastrophic plague of smallpox of 1861 which decimated the Native peoples. Again, in its modern context, the word evokes the elimination of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime. What is the implication here? Were the Native peoples deliberately eliminated by the Europeans, particularly by the Oblates? The book makes uncomfortable reading for another reason: for all its handsome presentation, it is not well edited. The style can be awkward, for example: >Though a less jaded observer might have sighted textbooks then in use in Ontario=s separate system that were not overtly abusive of Protestantism, the isolated nature of organized religion in British Columbia tended to bring out the very worst in everyone concerned.= Three times in one paragraph a sentence begins with >In addition.= Eugène de Mazenod, the founder of the Oblates, is repeatedly referred to as >Eugene,= with no accent. There are at least twenty typographical errors; in one instance, three on one page. More could be said here and examples given. Distant Vineyard, a product of painstaking and thorough research, is undoubtedly a contribution to history. It is regrettable that it was not written with more understanding and grace. (WALLACE PLATT) J.T.H. Connor. Doing Good: The Life of Toronto=s General Hospital University of Toronto Press, 2000. xii, 342. $60.00 In Doing Good, historian James T.H. Connor presents nearly two centuries of the evolution of hospital service by one of Canada=s premier medical institutions. His study is based on extensive primary research which includes minutes of the meetings of the board, nineteenth- and twentiethcentury press reports, government inspection records, and interviews with past and current staff in all the health professions. In addition, lay and medical readers will be introduced to the growing literature on the role of hospitals in reflecting social values and beliefs that contributed to their transformation from charitable facilities to research centres. By establishing 422 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 the context in which Toronto General Hospital was established and examining how it responded to urban-industrial growth in Ontario=s capital, Connor is attempting to provide a Canadian example of national and international trends. He succeeds admirably. In part 1, >Providing for the Sick Poor, 1797B1856,= Connor details the tumultuous events which shaped the foundation and opening decades of the hospital=s existence. From the 1790s, British governors and settlers argued in favour of creating a permanent hospital to care for the sick poor and immigrants who lacked the family homes in which most medical care took place. At the end of the War of 1812, the need for such a facility became urgent as a result of the number of war wounded and pensioners who needed care. In addition, the small medical community was beginning to want access to the sick poor for the purpose of emulating teaching practices in London and Edinburgh B the two leading medical education centres of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. On 3 June 1829, the York General Hospital began its long history of caring for citizens of Toronto and the surrounding counties as well as the waves of immigrants who peopled...