In the development of any complex system, there are always key individuals that make a difference. Saskatchewan’s development of a unique system of medical care is no exception. Time and circumstances created the environment but it was the drive and determination of several people who made the promise of change a reality. This page features people who worked within the medical profession and made a significant contribution to the development of medical care in Saskatchewan.

R.G. FERGUSON

Dr. R.G. Fergusson was the leading figure in the treatment of tuberculosis in Saskatchewan. Through his research and innovations, he gained an international reputation and brought the provincial TB death rate to the lowest in Canada. Born in 1883, on a farm near Joliette, North Dakota, he moved with his family to the Yorkton area in 1902. At the age of 21, he went to Wesley College in Winnipeg to complete his matriculation and to study theology. In 1912, he decided on a medical career and entered the Manitoba Medical College, graduating in 1916. The following year he accepted the position of Superintendent at the newly constructed sanatorium near the town of Fort Qu’Appelle For the next 31 years, Dr. Ferguson would set policy, harness to public’s cooperative spirit and promote educational initiatives for his staff and the population at large.

Ferguson published several papers that garnered him international acclaim . Among the best known are: “Report on the Medical Studies of the Anti-Tuberculosis Commission” (1922); “Tuberculosis Among the Indians of the Great Canadian Plains” (1928); and “BCG vaccination among the Indian Infants” (1949). His book “Studies in Tuberculosis”, published in 1955 made a valuable contribution to the study of epidemiology and control problems in tuberculosis. Among his many honours were being named a Member of the British Empire (1935) and an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Saskatchewan (1946). Dr. Ferguson died in Regina on 1 March 1964.

H.E. Johns

Dr. H.E. Johns devoted his career to the application of physics to medicine and biology. In 1944 Johns accepted a joint appointment with the physics department of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon and the new Saskatchewan Cancer Commission in Regina. With this he became Canada’s the first Medical Radiation Physicist. In October 1951, the world’s first non-commercial cobalt-60 therapy unit was opened at the University of Saskatchewan. It was designed by Harold Johns of the physics department, and built by John MacKay, owner of Acme Machine and Electric Co., Saskatoon. Cobalt-60 therapy was used for cancer treatments; Johns and his students (notably Sylvia Fedoruk) had also developed the “most reliable and complete set of isodose tables” then available to physicians. Prior to the Cobalt-60, cancer therapy through radiation could only get to superficial tumors. Post Cobalt 60 tumors that were deep-set and difficult to access could be treated. The machine was a major technological development, and the method was the start of the development of cobalt therapy for the treatment of cancer and is still a mainstay for cancer treatment in many third world countries.

Harold Elford Johns was born in Chengtu, West China in 1915. He obtained his B.A. from McMaster University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He was a faculty member at the University of Saskatchewan from 1944 until 1956, leaving to become Head of the Department of Biophysics at the University of Toronto. It was while at the U of T he founded the field of medical physics in Canada. Johns is considered to be influential in the early development of CT scanners and the definition of mammographic imaging. He also did significant work in showing the DNA damage in cells exposed to ultraviolet rays. Johns' book, The Physics of Radiology, was the primary textbook and reference in medical physics.

His many honours and awards include the Order of Canada and the first Medal of Honour from the Canadian Medical Association. His x-ray dosage table is still in use. It is estimated that more than seven million people worldwide have been helped by cobalt-60 therapy. Johns died in 1998 at the age of 83.

W. S. Lindsay

Dr. Walker Stewart Lindsay came to the University of Saskatchewan in 1919. For the next three decades he would play a pivotal role in the education of the province’s future doctors. Born in Halifax in 1885, he received his medical training at the University of Edinburgh. He was invited by University President, Walter Murray, whom he had known as a child, to create the small Department of Bacteriology under the aegis of the College of Arts and Science. Dr. Lindsay’s laboratory, in one of the greenhouses, was the first medical teaching facility in what would become in the School of Medical Sciences in 1926. Between 1926 and 1956, students at the University of Saskatchewan were able to take two years of basic pre-medical classes prior to enrolment at a major medical school in Canada for the final two years of instruction. The School became a College in 1952. Dr. Lindsay served as Dean of Medicine from 1926 until 1951.

M. M. Seymour

Commissioner of Public Health for Saskatchewan for more than two decades, Dr. Maurice Macdonald Seymour was a highly educated physician and surgeon, active in various prominent medical organizations of his day. Born in 1857 in Goderich, Ontario of Scottish-Irish ancestry, he graduated from McGill University as a physician and surgeon in 1879. He also earned a Ph.D. from University of Toronto. In 1881 he came west setting up a general practice in Winnipeg, often travelling hazardous distances on horseback in the course of his duties. When the Riel Rebellion arose in 1885, he served as a surgeon with the 96th Battalion.

Dr. Seymour relocated his practice to Fort Qu’Appelle in 1904. He was appointed the first Provincial Health Officer then elevated to Commissioner of Public Health for Saskatchewan two years later. He served in that post from 1909 until 1923. He was Deputy Minister of Health from 1923 to1927.

In recognition of Seymour’s dedicated and energetic leadership, Dr. A. Craik of the American College of Surgeons in a 1922 visit to Regina proclaimed the Saskatchewan Bureau of Health as the best in Canada. Dr. Seymour was also responsible for organizing both the Saskatchewan Medical Association and the Saskatchewan Anti-Tuberculosis League in 1906. He was elected president of the Canadian Public Health Association and in 1923 represented Canada in the Health Section, League of Nations. Dr. Seymour passed away on January 16, 1929.

Henry E. Sigerist

Henry E. Sigerist was in Saskatchewan for less than a month but his recommendations would act as a blueprint for health care in Saskatchewan for the next fifty years. Soon after coming to power Premier T.C. Douglas contacted the Johns Hopkins professor who had written extensively and glowingly about Soviet medicine. Dr. Sigerist was born in Paris, received his M.D. from the University of Zurich in 1917 and, after a period of medical service in the Swiss army, devoted himself to the study of the history of medicine while teaching at the Universities of Zurich and Leipzig. In 1931 he came to Johns Hopkins as a visiting lecturer in history of medicine and the following year succeeded William H. Welch as director of the Institute of the History of Medicine. In 1933, Sigerist founded the Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, which later became the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. In Saskatchewan, the 1944 Sigerist Report gave sudden impetus to building new hospitals and to the forming new Union Hospital Districts. Forty-four new districts were created in three years. A major figure in the socialized medicine movement, Sigerist was also a pioneer in the study of the social history of medicine. In 1947 he returned to Switzerland to work on a comprehensive multi-volume history of medicine. He died in 1957.