Duncan Graham: Medical Reformer and Educator

In 1919, the University of Toronto appointed a dour young pathologist, Great War veteran and prolific scholar to its chair of medicine.

During the next 28 years, Dr. Duncan Graham was to convert what had been a sound, but less than spectacular department into a training ground for medical scientists that was profoundly influence medical education throughout English-speaking Canada. Ruthlessly ridding the department of those he judged unsuited to the implementation of his policies; re-organizing patient care and teaching in the medical wards of Toronto General Hospital with a logical effiency that had not existed before; and challenging his students for their capacity for deductive reasoning. Graham changed Canadian medicine with a patience that seemed at times to border on indifference, even when a committee of the Ontario Legislature tried to block and reverse the changes he introduced.

Duncan Graham: Medical Reformer and Educator records the life of the remarkable individual who, by the force of his personality, his integrity, and the cold logic of his thinking, transformed Canadian medical education.

Robert B. Kerr was educated at the University of Toronto, receiving an MD in 1933 and an MA in 1936. He was a professor at both Toronto, and since 1950, the University of British Columbia. From 1950 to 1974 he was Head of the Medicine Departments at both University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital. He has served as President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Douglas Waugh was educated at the University of Manitoba and McGill where he earned an MD (1942), MSc (1948) and Ph.D. in Pathology (1950). From 1975 to 1983 he was Executive Director of the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges.