Andrew Fernando Holmes: Protestantism, Medicine, and Science in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

by Richard Vaudry

Overview

This is the first comprehensive study of the life and work of Andrew Fernando Holmes, famous for his work on congenital heart disease.

Physician, surgeon, natural historian, educator, Protestant evangelical. Andrew Fernando Holmes’s name is synonymous with the McGill medical faculty and with the discovery of a congenital heart malformation known as the "Holmes heart." Born in captivity at Cadiz, Spain, Holmes immigrated to Lower Canada in the first decade of the nineteenth century. He arrived in a province that was experiencing profound social, economic, and cultural change as the result of a long process of integration into the British Atlantic world. A transatlantic perspective, therefore, undergirds this biography, from an exploration of how Holmes’s family members were participants in an Atlantic world of trade and consumption, to explaining how his educational experiences at Edinburgh and Paris informed his approach to the practice of medicine, medical education, and medical politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487502195
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	03/03/2020
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard W. Vaudry is an emeritus professor in the Department of History at The King’s University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Anniversary

1. From Cadiz to Lower Canada: Holmes’s Atlantic World

2. "Well and Sufficiently Taught"

3. The Origins of McGill Medicine

4. Family and Religious Life

5. "The Wonders of Creation"

6. McGill and the Politics of Medicine

7. The Practice of Medicine

Conclusion

Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Abraham Fuks

"The strength of this work lies in the historical detail amassed by Richard W. Vaudry, and the vignettes of the early Montreal General Hospital and McGill's Faculty of Medicine."

Todd Webb

"Richard W. Vaudry convincingly argues that, in both the personal and professional spheres, Holmes was deeply influenced by his religious faith. That influence is most clearly demonstrated in Vaudry's discussion of Holmes's own religion, as well as Holmes's engagement in science in the years before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species transformed natural science into a battleground between those who shared Holmes's belief that God was in nature and agnostics like Thomas Huxley. Vaudry also provides a detailed discussion of the politics of medicine at the university, as well as at the colonial and imperial levels."

Editorial Reviews

"As the best history books do, this one carries bracing reminders on every page of just how much the world has changed."

—Ian McGillis, McGill Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Alumni & Friends

"Vaudry’s mastery of the historiography of medicine, science, and religion of the late-18th and mid-19th centuries results in a lucid, all-embracing, and satisfying assessment of Holmes’s life and varied lasting contributions."

—J. T. H. Connor, Memorial University, American Review of Canadian Studies
"This book offers a useful addition to our understanding of the early years of Canadian medicine and medical schools, one which avoids the too-often triumphalist approaches that lionize great men and treat the success of McGill (and other subsequent institutions) as somehow inevitable."—David Wright, McGill University, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"The strength of this work lies in the historical detail amassed by Richard W. Vaudry, and the vignettes of the early Montreal General Hospital and McGill's Faculty of Medicine."

—Abraham Fuks, Department of Medicine, McGill University

"Richard W. Vaudry convincingly argues that, in both the personal and professional spheres, Holmes was deeply influenced by his religious faith. That influence is most clearly demonstrated in Vaudry's discussion of Holmes's own religion, as well as Holmes's engagement in science in the years before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species transformed natural science into a battleground between those who shared Holmes's belief that God was in nature and agnostics like Thomas Huxley. Vaudry also provides a detailed discussion of the politics of medicine at the university, as well as at the colonial and imperial levels."

—Todd Webb, Department of History, Laurentian University

From the Publisher

"As the best history books do, this one carries bracing reminders on every page of just how much the world has changed."

McGill Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Alumni & Friends - Ian McGillis

"Vaudry's mastery of the historiography of medicine, science, and religion of the late-18th and mid-19th centuries results in a lucid, all-embracing, and satisfying assessment of Holmes's life and varied lasting contributions."

American Review of Canadian Studies - J. T. H. Connor

“This book offers a useful addition to our understanding of the early years of Canadian medicine and medical schools, one which avoids the too-often triumphalist approaches that lionize great men and treat the success of McGill (and other subsequent institutions) as somehow inevitable.”

Bulletin of the History of Medicine - David Wright