Neurosurgery at the Toronto General Hospital, 1924 - 1990: Part 1

The specialty of neurological surgery in this country began when Kenneth G. McKenzie was appointed to the Toronto General Hospital surgical staff in 1924, Canada's first dedicated neurosurgeon. In the years and decades that followed McKenzie and his successors established the Toronto General Hospital as one of the leading clinical and teaching neurosurgical units in the world. It was not without some sadness, therefore, that in 1990 neurosurgery left the walls of the Toronto General Hospital, the service transferred to join with the neurosurgical division of a sister hospital, the Toronto Western, during a merger which created the new, two-site, Toronto Hospital. The following story is of the men and women at the Toronto General Hospital who provided, advanced, and taught neurosurgical care. Many persons, among them orderlies, nurses and physicians, will not receive the mention they deserve in the pages that follow, but are no less remembered.