Sociology 2247A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter The Social Democratic and Current History of Medicare: Privatization and the State of Medicare in Canada : Visible Minority, Quackery, Abraham Flexner
8 Jun 2018
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Chapter 10
The Social Democratic and Current History of Medicare: Privatization and the State of Medicare in Canada
Early Canadian Medical Organizations
- The first Canadian medical system consisted of various medical/religious institutions of the many groups of
Aboriginal people
o Each had their own definition of what health was and its own pharmacopeia and preferred types of natural
interventions
o Orally passed down
o Only written is from white settlers, priests, tradesmen – written accounts tell us medicine men and
shaman were healers
- Shamans and Aboriginals people more generally developed a number of very effective botanical remedies such as
oil of wintergreen and physical remedies as well as sweat lodges and massages
- 17th century, Native people of Ontario were divided into two linguistic groups:
o Algonquin and Iroquois
o Iroquoian: studied bones dug from a burial mount found that these people suffered from arthritis,
osteomyelitis and tumours
▪ Internal disease was thought to be caused due to
1. breaking a taboo
2. ghost of humans, which craved company
3. the evil ministrations of a menstruating woman
4. unfulfilled desires/dreams
- aboriginals believed EVRYTHING had a spritit
o men esp. young people were expected to go on a search for a dream/vision
o had to spend a week without food – the young person would have a vision that was then interpreted by a
medical man
o medical men were both the spiritual leaders and healers – cast spells and predict the future
- a practical armamentarium of medicines evolved which included treatments for widely differing medical
problems
- aboriginal practices used for ritual purposes and sometimes reside in the pharmacological effectiveness
o medical benefit found in scraping of white bark of cedar (rich in Vitamin C) to treat scurvy
o taught to Cartier by the Aboriginals
- Health of settlers was assaulted
o Malnourished and dealt with horrid conditions
The Originals of the contemporary Medical Care System
- Dominant medical practices today can be traced back to the 19th century
o Medical shows were common in the 1830s and 1840s
- Most of the first allopathic practitioners in New France were Barber-surgeons from France who received
primitive training as apprentices
o Required both dexterity with a knife
o Surgery was practiced on limbs and the surface of the body
o Internal surgeries almost always resulted in death
- First Canadian Surgeons in Upper Canada were army surgeons
o Homeopathic and eclectics worked with allopathic
- There was no one dominant medical practitioners
- First medical school in Canada est in 1824 – theories about disease were not scientifically based
o First state medical practice came in 1832 because advance warning of immigrants with Cholera
o Government immediately sanctioned the Sanitary Commission and a Board of Health issuing directions
- Massive Cholera outbreak from 1832 to 1854 necessitated the est of a quarantine station at Grosse Isle on the St.
Lawrence of ship passengers who were infected, and this not allowed to enter Canada
o Quebec adopted hospitals to isolate people
o Public ordinances which received the force of law in 1831 prevented the sale of meats from diseased
animals and appointed civil authorities to inspect dwellings for their state of cleanliness
- Early health measured → QUARENTINE AND SANITATION
o Government later became involved with the Public Health Act of 1882 in Ontario
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o Drug and Food Act
o Narcotics Control Act
o The Proprietary and Patent Measures Act and;
o The est. of Hospitals and Asylums
The Early Efforts of Allopathic Physicians to Organize
- Numerous attempts to have legislation passed by allopathic doctors from 1795 that would”
o Prohibit any but allopathic practitioners from practicing medicine
o Provide the allopath’s with licenses under which they could practice
o Control admittance to allopathic practice
- The allopathic practitioners often had high social standing
- Often ex-military
- Highest in the social circle, married into important families, stood for Parliament, edited influential newspaper’s
and provided care for the wealthier class
- Toronto allopath’s
o Often businessmen, church leaders and town politicians
o 1852 an informal group est the Upper Canada journal of Medical, Surgical and Physical Science
- Allopath’s complained of competition and ‘quackery’ disorganized state medical practice
- Complained of ‘irregular doctors’
o In 1859 homeopathy was the first profession to be legalized and to est a board to examine and licence
practitioners
o The eclectics made a board in 1861
- Upper Canada Journal denounced homeopathy as ‘so utterly opposed to science and common sense, as well as so
completely at variance with the experience of medical professions, t out to be no way practices or countenanced
by any regular educated practitioner’
- Eclectics were called ‘spurious pretenders’ and seen as a threat to science
- Competition between allopath’s (school men vs. upper Canada) prevented unified standard of education, practice
and licensing
- 1850 the school men held the most power
o They succeeded in passing self-reg legislation
o By 1869 created the Ontario Medical Act and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario
▪ Both hemopathy and eclectics were included in this
o Homeopaths included in the College until 1960
o Eclectics were excluded in 1874
- 1986 Act gave control over the education of medicine
o Private schools opened
- College of Phys and Surgeons of Lower Canada formed in 1847
- In 1912 The Canadian Medical Act which standardized licensing procedures across Canada
o After came The Flexner Report Medical Education in USA and Canada was published in 1910 and
sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and Rockefeller
▪ The report was written by Abraham Flexner (American Educators) and criticized the Canadian
medical system
▪ Advertised eliminating standard of entrance requirements, apprenticeships and the est of more
rigorous scientific programs of study
▪ Requested closing medical schools (esp. private) for not meeting scientific standards
o Flexner Report changed Canada medical education
▪ McGill University and the University of Toronto were the only schools in Canada given
acceptable rating
▪ Medicine became institutionalized by Univ’s
▪ It enhanced scientific legitimacy based on clinical practice
▪ Reinforced importance of empirical science with emphasis on observation, replication,
experiments. Publications, - emph’d the use of hospitals and centralized instructions of doctors
to be
- 1920s marked the system that Canada knows today
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