Brock Chisholm: Doctor to the World

Cynthia R. Comacchio is an associate professor of history at Wilfrid
Laurier University and the author of Nations Are Built of Babies: Saving
Ontario’s Mothers and Children.

Brock Chisholm (1896–1971) was a physician and psychiatrist who became
the first Director-General of the World Health Organization, created in
the aftermath of the Second World War. Born in Oakville, Ontario, to a
family of modest means, the young Chisholm emerged from the Great War
with the Military Cross and Bar. His war experiences pushed him in the
direction of psychiatry. Following his graduation from the University of
Toronto in 1924, he pursued specialized psychiatric training first at
Yale University and then in various hospitals in London, England, where
he became interested in the application of psychology to the training of
soldiers. During World War II, Chisholm served as the Canadian army’s
first Director of Personnel Selection. It was in this capacity that he
introduced psychological screening of new recruits, developing a system
that was eventually adopted by the American, British, and European
allies. He ended the war as deputy minister of the newly created
Department of National Health and Welfare. The crowning achievement of
his career, however, was his work to establish the World Health
Organization, which he would head in 1948.

This biography also offers some insights into Chisholm’s private
life, many of them derived from the memories of his two children. The
Chisholms evidently adhered to the behaviorist school of child-rearing
(popularized by the American psychiatrist, John B. Watson), which
emphasized reason and conditioning over physical affection and emotional
closeness. Chisholm attracted considerable media attention in 1945, when
he declared that children’s mental health was permanently destroyed by
belief in myths such as Santa Claus. The author reminds us that, during
the two decades following the war, the outspoken Chisholm was one of the
most controversial figures in Canada. This book is a useful addition to
the literature on Canadian psychiatry and its wartime uses, and on
postwar reconstruction policies, both national and international.