Doing Good: The Life of Toronto's General Hospital

John H. Gryfe is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practising in
Toronto.

Anyone who has worked in a hospital for any length of time appreciates
the individual personality each of these institutions develops. “The
TGH,” perhaps Canada’s most influential health facility, began life
as an oasis for the ailing “deserving poor” at King and John
Streets. Today this venerable institution enjoys a position of clinical,
educational, and research superiority.

Doing Good traces the development of the TGH over its 200-year history,
from its conception in 1797 as a hospital for York, the new capital of
Upper Canada, through its 19th-century phase as a charitable institution
receiving government funding to provide health care for sick immigrants,
to the 20th century, when major new facilities were built next to the
University of Toronto and the TGH became an important teaching hospital.
Today, the TGH is part of The University Health Network, a
mega-corporation that includes the Toronto Western Hospital, Princess
Margaret Hospital, and the former Doctors Hospital.

Author J.T.H. Connor, a visiting research associate at the Institute
for the History of Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of
Toronto, was fortunate to have his office within one of the older
sections of the entity he was recording for future generations. Readily
available documents (including government reports, correspondence,
trustee minutes, newspapers, and photographs) and the reminiscences of
patients, doctors, nurses, and trustees provide the basis for this
engagingly written and informative biography of a hospital that has,
indeed, taken on human characteristics over the years.