History of Medicine: People and projects
Get to know our endowed Hannah Chairs and other
funding recipients. Be inspired by their work.
Hannah Chairs
Through permanent endowment these eight professors teach the history of medicine in healthcare education. Learn about their exceptional backgrounds and research interests.
Dr. Darrel Manitowabi
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Alex Souchen
Weapons of mass pollution: health and environmental hazards in Canada’s munitions industry during the Second World War
This project sits at the intersection of medical, environmental, and military history. It will teach us about the history of toxicity and risk prevention related to workplace safety, medical treatments, and decontamination methods in the 1940s. During the Second World War, Canadian industries produced about 4.4 billion rounds of ammunition, 72 million artillery shells, and…
Lori Jones
Manuscripting English medical knowledge in the early age of print
My postdoctoral research focuses on how individuals, and especially medical practitioners, adapted and personalised printed medical treatises by copying these often long (and sometimes learned) texts into manuscript in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. To understand the production and use of medical knowledge in the early modern era, we must consider manuscripts and printed texts…
Matthew Wiseman
The histories of military funding and medical science in Cold War Canada
Matthew called his AMS project, “Cold Soldiers: Medical Scientist Alan C. Burton and Military Experimentation in Cold War Canada”. It examined Burton’s postwar research contributions to military science in Canada. His work for the Defence Research Board is important for medical historians because it shows the entangled histories of military funding and medical science in…
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Doctoral Research
Jody Hodgins
Meeting Demands for Animal Healthcare: Veterinary Medicine in Rural Southern Ontario, 1862-1939
Before veterinarians populated the countryside, people had limited access to health knowledge and relied on experienced neighbours or medical doctors to practice animal healthcare. Jody’s dissertation examines the interdependence between animal, human, and environmental health to show advancements in public health and the role veterinary medicine had in shaping our current understanding of modern medicine…
Erin Gallagher-Cohoon
Queerly Familial: Canadian Histories of Queer Reproduction, Parenting, and Activism
Erin’s dissertation analyzes Canadian histories of queer parenting and queer family formations in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Drawing from psychological, legal, media, policy and oral history sources, my research questions sociocultural constructions of the categories of “family” and “parenthood.” This dissertation sits at the intersection between histories of medicine, histories of sexuality, and…
Justin Fisher
Saskatchewan’s Power: Technology, health, and democracy during the Energy Crisis, 1971-1982
The 1970s energy crisis launched a decade of debate over the impacts of new energy developments in Saskatchewan. Home to an abundance of diverse energy resources including fossil fuels, uranium, hydro, and exceptional renewable energy potential, the province was well-positioned to take advantage of surging global demand for new and accessible energy sources. However, people…
Lucy Vorobej
“By Their Own Efforts”: First Nations Health Policy in Canada, 1945-1980
Lucy’s project examines the development and implementation of First Nations health policy during Canada’s post-war period of integration. It analyzes how the idea of race and the objectives of settler colonialism impacted debates about jurisdiction, affected the nature of health services offered to First Nations peoples, and limited the creation of meaningful partnerships with First Nations leaders.
Martin Beaulieu
The therapeutic use of cinema to treat mentally ill patients (1895-1950)
Martin Beaulieu examines the therapeutic use of cinema by the mental health professions, trying to understand why and how the cinema was considered a therapeutic tool to treat mental disorders.
Project Grantees
These grantees received small budget support for projects in history of healthcare/disease and medicine.
Robert Paul
#TeamVaccine: Exploring the History of Toronto’s COVID-19 Vaccination Initiative through Social Media
In 2021, Toronto’s healthcare institutions – its academic hospitals, community health centres and faculties of health sciences – came together to plan, coordinate, staff and promote large-scale COVID-19 vaccination clinics in Toronto and in its surrounding areas. The size, the scale and the collaboration of this vaccine campaign were unprecedented in Toronto history. Through interviews…
David Monteyne
Quarantine Stations and Lazarettos: Histories of Architecture and Public Health
Quarantine – or spatial segregation – was one of the first and only solutions for public health prior to the late 19th century. The quarantine of groups suspected of carrying diseases began to be formalized in the late medieval Mediterranean. These early public health policies and practices immediately led to the requirement for quarantine spaces:…
Kenton Kroker
Innovation, Expertise, and Equity: Creating Sleep Medicine within Canada’s Universal Health Care System, 1970–2000
Sleep complaints are ancient, but it was only during the 1970s and ‘80s that sleep began to emerge as a sub-specialty of medical practice. Canadian clinicians were on the cutting edge of this development, but this story remains unwritten. Sleep medicine evolved in tandem with the divergence of Canadian and American systems of state medical…
Michelle Hamilton
Medical Instruments as Authority and Knowledge: A Research and Documentary Project
The Medical Artifact Collection at Western University stores approximately 1300 objects with an adjacent teaching space and curates six exhibit cases. ‘Medical Instruments as Authority and Knowledge’ will combine published and archival sources, our artifacts, and past and new oral history interviews of physicians to betterunderstand the role of instruments in medical practice. Did medical…
Jacalyn Duffin
History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction
History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction (3rd ed. 2021) is the product of a long career of research and teaching, supported by AMS. But it is not accessible to francophones in Canada or elsewhere. Jacalyn’s project will provide a French-language edition of this popular introductory textbook, which is aimed at students in the health-care…
Efrat Gold
Archiving Patient-Led Mad Activism in Canada, 1970s-2020
Efrat’s project is designed in two segments. The first segment involves the curation of mad-centered archival material not yet available in the public domain. The second is an original research segment, using critical discourse analysis of the archival material, that seeks to enhance understandings of the crucial and active role of mental patients in shaping…
2020
Imperial pathways of mobility: doctoring women and the American surgical enterprise in Iran, 1888-1940
The University of British Columbia
History of vaccine resistance in Canada
University of Guelph
2019
How to save a life: Investigating gendering biomedical innovation
McGill University
“Illustrer le travail du coroner, du médecin légiste et de l’historien : défis et enjeux de l’histoire du geste suicidaire au Québec depuis 250 ans.”
University of Ottawa
Health and medicine in the Maritimes 1765-1830: Knowledge, networks, and practices in an age of revolution and loyalism
University of New Brunswick
Exploring ethics and Canadian clinical cancer trials, 1978-1998
Caring for the Commonwealth: Nurses, Doctors and the Colombo Plan of the 1950’s
University of New Brunswick
A short history of global/international health in the Americas: Canadian perspectives
University of Toronto
2018
Diversity of research traditions in the history of autism
University of Toronto
Life before medicare
Queen’s University
The history of the Hornby and Danman Community Health Care Society, 1978-2010
York University
False faces: Examining the cultural history of cosmetic surgery
Healing the body to save the soul: Jesuit medicine in 17th century Asia
Manuscripting English medical knowledge in the early age of print
2017
Creating a Centre for Science, Technology, Environment and Medicine Studies (C-STEMS) at the University of Calgary, AB
University of Calgary
The origins and uses of a verbal artifact in clinical medicine, 1920-2000
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Colonial extractions: Oral health, Indigenous Peoples and the federal government
University of Guelph
Childhood hand hygiene education and responsible motherhood in Canada, 1910-1979
Dalhousie University
Indigenous mental health workers and the challenges of cross-cultural psychiatry at the Sioux Lookout Zone Hospital, 1969-1996
Western University
Exploring the history of natural childbirth in Canada and the world
2016
University of New Brunswick
Queen’s University
Brock University
University of Guelph
Canada’s health humanitarian work in South and Southeast Asia, 1950-1968.
Examining interwar veterans and healthcare in Alberta
2015
Patient involvement in Canadian medical education: A historical study to inform the future
University of British Columbia
Mindfulness and emotionally healthy students in Canadian schools, 1960s to the present
St. Thomas University
Frances Oldham Kelsey, M.D., Ph. D.: From Cobble Hill to the F.D.A.
Vancouver Island University
From brains on the bench to images of mind? A critical appraisal.
University of Calgary
Exploring LSD Psychotherapy in the United States, 1949-1976
Interpreting the genetic revolution
Apply for funding
Are you doing important work in this area? Have a timely idea that needs funding? Our grants and fellowships can support your projects and help you access valuable networks.