First Day Cover Canada March 15, 1991 Doctors

First Day Cover Canada March 15, 1991 Doctors . Bought new and put into a box.

"Wilder Graves Penfield (1891-1976), brain surgeon and scientist, ranks among the world leaders in neurology and neurosurgery in 1934, he founded the Montreal neurological Institute, a neurological hospital integrated with a brain-research complex. Here he brought together teams of doctors and scientists to study and teach new ways of treating disorders of the nervous system. Under his leadership, they developed the "Montreal procedure", a surgical cure for epilepsy that has helped thousands of patients. The organization of the institute and the work of its staff have served as a model for centres in many other countries. Dr. Penfield;s meticulously recorded observations have thrown new light on the function of memory, learning, and language, and on how the human brain relates to the mind.

Jennie (Jenny) Kidd Trout (1841-1921) became the first Canadian woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada. In a time when there was resistance to women in medicine, she attended the Toronto School of Medicine and then the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, graduating in 1875. After passing the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons' licensing examination, Dr. Trout began the successful Therapeutic and Electrical Institute in Toronto and supervised a free dispensary for the poor. After seven hectic years, she gradually turned her attention to the cause of women's medical education and influenced the development of coeducational institutions at Queen's by encouraging young women to enter medicine. In 1883, she helped to organize and endow the women's Medical College in Kingston.

Sir Frederick Grant Banting (1891-1941) rose to international recognition in 1922 for his part in the discovery of insulin, one of the most celebrated achievements in Canadian medicine. In 1921, Dr. Banting took the idea of a hormone to treat diabetes to J. J. R. Macleod at the University of Toronto, who supervised the research, provided laboratory space and assigned Charles Best to assist Banting with the original research. J. B. Collip, a biochemist joined the team in the winter of 1921-22 and found a way to purify insulin for human use. Banting and Macleod won the 1923 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine and the two shared their prize money with Best and Collip. Banting was appointed Canada's first professor of medical research at the University of Toronto and was knighted in 1934.

Harold Randall Griffith (1894-1985) made a great contribution to the field of medicine in 1942 with his introduction of muscle relaxants to the practice of anesthesia. This outstanding achievement greatly reduced anesthesia-induced illness and death, allowing for the rapid development of surgery of all types which we now take for granted. Dr. Griffith also helped organize a teaching program in anesthesia for physicians in the armed forces. This led him to organize and develop the McGill Diploma Course in Anesthesia. He became one of Canada's best known anesthetists, developing an anesthesia society in Montreal, then across Canada and finally throughout the world. Griffith established the first post-operative recovery room in Canada in 1943 and established an intensive care unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 1961.

(Cachet photos: UL - Montreal neurological Institute, UR - University of Toronto's Medical Building/National Archives of Canada/PA 160608: LL - woman's Medical college/Queen's Archives, LR - Homeopathic Hospital (Queen Elizabeth Hospital) courtesy Dr. D. Gillies)