The history of sixteen extant medical schools by a distinguished surgeon-historian glows with biographical sketches of their pioneers, "movers and shakers". Setting out to expose the elements necessary and common to all modern medical education, the author's zest for the unique, the colourful and spontaneous, has actually encouraged him to render the accounts of the several schools in novella-like form.
Each account reflects the rich, cross-grained Canadian variety of religion, language, culture and personality. In the end, shared overall experience and need — and generous federal support, especially after the second half of the twentieth century — created a remarkably interlinked and unified set of medical institutions.
Contributing to the flavour of this saga is the paradox that against long odds a nation still less than thirty million, inhabiting the largest land mass in the world, has produced a medical system and serving personnel second to none; while its record of research, discovery and precocious clinical application is no less remarkable in most fields of modern medicine. Over and above this achievement is the striking fact that a quarter of a century ago this country was able to extend quality publicly funded health care to all its people.
The author did not set out to write a brief history of medicine in Canada. It is for the reader to judge whether the recounting of two centuries of social and scientific history incident to the assembly and refinement of the medical schools — with their collegial linkages to Edinburgh, London, Paris and the USA — is the closest thing to it. Be that as it may, he has contrived to tell his story with measured grace, wit, candour and authority, while his summations in broad interpretive chapters, fore and aft, cast much additional critical light on the whole process

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