Langstaff: A Nineteenth-Century Medical Life

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

Jacalyn Duffin is both a physician and Hannah Professor of the History
of Medicine (Queen’s University, Kingston). This impressive
combination of skills and training is used to tremendous effect in this
biography of an “ordinary physician” of the 19th-century, which is
so much more than the life story of one practitioner, fascinating though
that story is in and of itself. Dr. James Miles Langstaff (1825–1889)
was a general practitioner in the then-rural community of Richmond Hill,
Ontario. Against the background of profound historical developments in
medicine (e.g., the introduction of anaesthesia, antisepsis, and germ
theory) and within the context of a transformative period in Canadian
history, ranging from pre-Confederation settlement through the rise of
industrialization in the late Victorian era, the story of one man’s
relations with his family, his community, his profession, and medical
science itself unfolds in lively detail.

The first two chapters reveal Langstaff’s background and training,
family relations, and political and religious leanings. Two chapters
then provide the medico-historical context of his life and practice in
discussions of diagnostic and therapeutic developments of the period and
their impact on general practice. Chapters 5 to 9 are imaginative and
intriguing accounts of the social history of 19th-century medicine;
topics covered include morbidity and mortality, mental illness and
addiction (alcoholism), surgical practices, obstetrics, and the rise of
public health as the century drew to a close. Six appendices provide
information on the contents of the doctor’s library and of his
pharmacopoeia, and lists of his diagnoses, properties, and professional
associates.

This clean and engaging study is highly recommended to historians of
medicine, to social historians, and to nonacademic readers interested in
a slice of 19th-century Canadian life.