Bonesetters and Others: Pioneer Orthopaedic Surgeons

Cynthia R. Comacchio is an assistant professor of History at Wilfrid
Laurier University in Waterloo.

Mayba, himself a Winnipeg orthopaedic specialist, chronicles the
evolution of that city’s medical profession from the late nineteenth
century (which saw the establishment of the Manitoba Medical College in
1883) through to the present day. The author focuses particularly,
though not exclusively, on the “bonesetters” of the title.

Since “Winnipeg led the West and in many respects Canada in the
development of this specialty in our country,” this city’s medical
history is of more than local interest. Several of Winnipeg’s
orthopaedic surgeons, as Mayba reveals, established international
reputations. By means of personal interviews and a survey of the
archives of local medical societies and centres, the author has provided
a comprehensive listing of the membership and activities of Winnipeg
practitioners in this field. He begins with an interesting “brief
history of bonesetting,” which takes the specialty back to prehistoric
times, and includes short biographies of its earliest European and
American practitioners. His coverage of the origins of the Winnipeg
Orthopaedic Society, traced to 1948, and its postwar relationship with
the Canadian Orthopaedic Association provides considerable detail,
especially for the past 30 years. Mayba devotes the second half of the
book to biographical sketches of Winnipeg’s leading medical
practitioners from pioneer times to the present. Particularly
interesting are the stories of three female doctors, Charlotte Whitehead
Ross and the mother-daughter team of Amelia and Lilian Yeomans. Ross,
who received her medical degree from Philadelphia’s Women’s Medical
College in 1865, was purportedly the first woman physician to practice
medicine in Montreal. The Yeomans, who both received their degrees and
began practicing in the early 1880s, are considered to have been the
first women doctors in Winnipeg. As was typical of female practitioners
of the time, they all focused on treating women and children. Also
typically, the Yeomans were active in local reform and political
activities, especially those involving social purity, suffrage, and
temperance.

Mayba’s book will appeal to those engaged in the specialty and will
also serve as a foundation for further analysis by researchers of
Canadian socio-medical history. It would be interesting to know more
about Winnipeg’s particular role within the broader national and
international medical community, and how regional and local factors may
have influenced a “Western” approach to the type and delivery of
health-care service.