Club members John Dirks, Peter Kopplin, Christopher Rutty and Alison Li, along with colleagues Gary Goldberg, Erling Norrby of Stockholm and James Wright of Calgary and partners Christine Kopplin, Andrea Rutty, and Elsebeth Welander-Berggren were warmly welcomed to Aberdeen by John Otto and Kimberlie Hamilton, co-founders of the JJR Macleod Memorial Statue Society, and by our good friend Kenneth McHardy.
A striking portrait of Dr. Alexander Thomas Augusta (1825-1890) was unveiled November 7, 2024 at a celebration held in Seeley Hall, Trinity College, University of Toronto. Dr Augusta was a physician, army officer, hospital administrator, professor, and a life-long activist fighting racism and segregation. He was the first Black officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, the first Black hospital administrator, and the first Black medical professor in the United States.
Augusta was born in Norfolk, Virginia but arrived in Toronto and enrolled in medicine at Trinity College in 1853 after he was refused admission to medical school in the US. He became the first Black medical student in Canada West and was awarded his medical degree in 1860. While in Toronto, he opened a drugstore on Yonge Street and later a private practice as surgeon. As president of an organization to advance education among the Black community, he provided books and school supplies to Black children. During the American Civil War, he returned to the US and was commissioned as major and served as the first Black physician in the Union Army. In 1868, he was appointed to the faculty of Howard University.
Club member Christopher Rutty is featured in this fascinating story that appears in today’s Globe & Mail. Dr Rutty is resident historian and manager of the Sanofi Toronto archives where an 80-year old bottle in a museum display-case provided striking evidence of the value of freeze-dried blood serum.
Ivan Semeniuk has an excellent article in today’s Globe & Mail titled “Prize Fight: One century later, experts revisit the hidden feud behind Canada’s First Nobel,” describing the complex history behind the award to Banting and Macleod for the discovery of insulin. Semeniuk attended the symposium hosted by the Toronto Medical Historical Club last month and describes the hidden tensions among the key figures as well as the evolution of the story of the discovery over the past 100 years. Several speakers at the symposium, John Dirks, James Wright, and Ken McHardy, are interviewed in the article.
In today’s Ottawa Citizen, Ryan Briggs and Christopher Rutty argue for the declaration of “Smallpox Eradication Day.” In the context of COVID-19, which reminded the world of the power of a novel virus to bring illness and death, Briggs and Rutty make the case that it is important to remember what was accomplished on Dec. 9, 1979.
You can read more in Chris’s article titled “Smallpox: ‘The Speckled Monster'” which was written for the University of Toronto Connaught Fund website for his series on the Connaught Laboratories.
