The Royal Victoria Hospital
The Royal Victoria Hospital was established in 1893 in the historic Golden Square Mile through donations by two public-spirited Scottish immigrants, the cousins Donald Smith, 1stLord Strathcona, and George Stephen, 1stLord Mount Stephen. In 1887, they announced a joint gift of 1 M$ for the construction of a free hospital in Montreal and purchased a site on Mount Royal for a further $86,000.
The site they bought was the old Frothingham estate that covered ten acres of land. During 1897 and 1898, Smith and Stephen gave another million in Great Northern Railroad securities to establish an endowment fund to maintain the hospital. Stephen and Smith attached one caveat to their generous contribution to the City of Montreal: the hospital's land and its buildings must only ever be used for healing.
The founders intended the Royal Vic to "to be for the use of the sick and ailing without distinction of race or creed," and when it opened in 1893 it was hailed as the "finest and most perfectly equipped (hospital) on the great American continent". The hospital originally had 150 employees, including 14 medical doctors.
Over the years, the philanthropy and business acumen of many of the residents of the Golden Square Mile - the prominent members of Montreal's English speaking community - brought the hospital global recognition as a major centre of healthcare and learning. Major contributors included James Ross, Richard Angus, Sir Vincent Meredith and Sir Montagu Allan.
In 1920, the hospital became a medical research institute through the McGill University Faculty of Medicine. In 1929, Dr. Wilder Penfield established the Montreal Neurological Institute adjacent to the hospital. Among the list of medical achievements at the Royal Victoria was the first successful kidney transplant in the Commonwealth in 1958. It was achieved by a team led by nephrologist John Dossetor and surgeons Joe Luke and Ken MacKinnon.
The Royal Victoria Hospital Foundation was created when medicare was created and the hospital became a public institution to protect the community's interests and generosity.
In 1992, the Royal Victoria Hospital merged with the Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Children's Hospital, the Montreal Chest Institute and the Montreal Neurological Hospital to form the McGill University Health Centre.
Notable surgeons
- Sir Thomas Roddick, first Surgeon-in-Chief of the Royal Vic;
- Edward William Archibald, dubbed Canada's first neurosurgeon, President of the American Surgical Association;
- Lt. Colonel John McCrae, Royal Vic physician who wrote In Flanders Fields;
- Norman Bethune, developed a mobile blood-transfusion service during the Spanish Civil War;
- Wilder Penfield, OM, CC, CMG, FRS, founded the Montreal Neurological Institute, called "the greatest living Canadian" in his day;
- Martin Henry Dawson, the first person in history to inject penicillin into a patient, 1940;
- Arthur Vineberg, OC, developed the 'Vineberg Procedure' at the Royal Vic in 1950;
- Kathryn Stephenson, the first female American plastic surgeon, first female editor of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery;
- John Dossetor, OC, co–coordinated the first kidney transplant in both Canada and the Commonwealth, 1958;
- Balfour Mount, OC, considered the father of palliative care in North America;
- Jonathan LarmonthMeakins, OC, Royal Vic Chief Surgeon; 4thperson and 1stCanadian Nuffield Professor of Surgery at Oxford, 2002.