THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN
For the Love of Children

On March 23, 1875, a group of dedicated Christian women led by Elizabeth McMaster opened a small hospital for sick children in an 11-room house in a central but poor section of Toronto. Ten days later Maggie, a three-year-old child who had been terribly scalded in an accident in her nearby home, was carried, bundled up in a coat, by her ten-year-old sister to the front door of the new hospital. A kindly lady in a long dress and starched white apron opened the door to admit Maggie, the first patient of the Hospital for Sick Children (HSC).

Those who cared for Maggie were determined to ensure that she would receive the medical treatment necessary to restore her to full health and strength. Facilities were severely limited and the building had a leaky roof and several broken windows. But, it was well located on a small portion of the present site of the Toronto General Hospital. The rent was $320 a year!

The dedication and sensitive work of founder Elizabeth McMaster and her friends and supporters made possible the establishment and development of the hospital in the early days. Their efforts and those of their successors, particularly the medical, nursing, and support staffs, to provide the highest quality of medical treatment for children, are the primary sources of its continuing power and strength. Equally vital are the knowledge, skill, and compassion of its medical specialists.

The first club foot operation at HSC on a child over two years old was performed in 1886. Gradually, so many crippled children were brought to HSC for this operation that it was necessary to set up an orthopaedic department in 1898. By 1901 correction of body deformities had become a leading specialty at the hospital. The head of orthopaedics, Dr. Clarence Starr, became one of the world’s leading orthopaedic surgeons and teachers. A long line of equally brilliant surgeons followed, including Dr. Robert Salter whose arrival in 1955 led to a new era in orthopaedics. His operation to correct the dislocated hips of infants is widely acclaimed. The outstanding success achieved in orthopaedics at HSC is only one example of the brilliant accomplishments of members of the various medical departments at HSC.

The list of specialists who have made and are making HSC known and respected is long and impressive. Among them are Dr. John Keith, the cardiologist; Joe Bower, the Superintendent; Harry Balmford, who “manufactured” iron lungs during the polio epidemic in the late 1950s; Dr. Stewart Thomson, who introduced into Canada the new treatment for club feet in infants; Dr. D.E. Robertson who, in 1940, performed the first “blue baby” operation at HSC to correct “a hole in the heart”; Dr. William T. Mustard, Dr. Laurie Chute, and Dr. William Keith who, in 1951, developed a heart-lung machine.

Dr. Mustard first used the heart-lung machine in 1963 to bypass the heart and circulate and oxygenize blood during heart surgery. The “Mustard Operation” revolutionized heart surgery: it became standard procedure at HSC and was later used with great success in the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, England.

In 1966 Dr. J. Simpson and his team separated the first set of Siamese twins at HSC. One survived. In 1971 a second set underwent the operation with both surviving.

Those to whom specific reference has been made include only a small, albeit a highly significant, group from the large company of devoted and highly gifted men and women who have contributed and are contributing to the high esteem in which HSC is held around the world.

When HSC was established, there was only one major children’s hospital in the world — that on Great Ormond Street in London. Since then, many hospitals devoted to the needs of children have been established. But wherever and whenever medical specialists meet, there is knowledge of the work of members of HSC in the treatment of children’s diseases.

Specialists at HSC have earned international renown through their research and innovative procedures. The reputation HSC has gained is based, however, not just on the skill of such individuals and the groups in which they work. As a teaching hospital, HSC has a long tradition of service to the Canadian medical profession and the many communities dependent on it.

In 1901 HSC established the first “in hospital” plant for the pasteurization of milk in Toronto to which parents could come to purchase milk for their babies at cost. Pablum and Sunwheat biscuits were developed at HSC. For children hospitalized for long-term treatment, programs for visiting school teachers were arranged so that the children might continue their education. A team of visiting nurses was established to monitor, when needed, the health of patients on their return home. An out-patient department gradually expanded to include a large number of special out-patient services.

The original 2^_to 14^_year age limit for children admitted for treatment was gradually extended to include newborn children and young people up to 18 years of age.

With more and more children coming from increasingly distant places, there was need for a special service to ensure that parents who could not come to Toronto were advised concerning the health of their children. In 1930 the Parents Personal Service was inaugurated with Nurse Alice Boxhill in charge. Her loving concern for parents of children in HSC was greatly appreciated by those who received letters and photographs of their children while they were in hospital.

In 1950 Dr. A.L. Chute, then physician-in-chief, suggested to his wife, Dr. Helen Reid, that she organize a group to raise funds for the further development of the hospital’s library. Dr. Reid’s group secured the necessary funds and thus contributed to the improvement of the library’s resources which subsequently became quite extensive. The group that Dr. Reid brought together became the nucleus of the HSC Women’s Auxiliary. Its members now serve in virtually every department of the hospital and the auxiliary is regarded as indispensable in the effective operations of the hospital.

One of the services staffed by the Women’s Auxiliary is the Parents Postoperative Information Service which provides, to parents and family anxiously waiting for reports from the doctors, information on the progress of children undergoing surgery and/or special tests.

A major source of the hospital’s strength and of its capacity for development is the financial support it receives from a wide variety of individuals and organizations. The first recorded donation was “some English coins” — about ten dollars in Canadian money. Among early benefactors, one of the most generous was John Ross Robertson, founder and publisher of The Evening Telegram, one of Toronto’s leading newspapers for many years. He became Chairman of the Board of Trustees in 1891 and served in that capacity for 27 years. During his chairmanship, financial support for the hospital was secured from many prominent individuals and organizations in Toronto. Before he died in 1918, Robertson had provided in his will that revenue from the major portion of his estate be paid to the hospital provided that it continued to be independent and was “maintained and kept exclusively as a Hospital for Sick Children, and for no other purpose....”

John Ross Robertson’s altruism encouraged others to make similar contributions. One of these was J.P. Bickell, a mining executive, whose charitable foundation has provided continuing support.

After Robertson became Chairman, the women who had worked with Elizabeth McMaster in the founding of HSC turned their attention to the development of a home for children for whom the doctors could do little. First called The Home For Incurable Children, it later became the Bloorview Children’s Hospital.

As HSC developed, it was regularly in need of better facilities and more space. In 1892 an entirely new building at the corner of Elizabeth and College Streets, designed specifically for the Hospital, was opened. It became the home of HSC for 60 years. For over half of that time, from 1919 until 1951, Dr. Alan Brown served as physician-in-chief. During his time the hospital survived attempts to phase it out. He and his colleagues at HSC were resolutely committed to its continuance as an independent hospital of the highest quality devoted exclusively to the care and treatment of sick children and to the training of medical and nursing specialists who would devote themselves to that objective.

In 1951, not far from where Mary Pickford of Hollywood fame grew up, a second new building, again constructed specifically for HSC, was opened at Gerrard Street and University Avenue, not far from the earlier site. This new facility had nearly doubled the accommodation of the earlier building. In the early 1990s about 500 rooms were staffed and in service. Over 15,000 patients were being treated annually. They were coming from more than 30 countries by car, train, and aeroplane.

Improvements to the hospital’s building in the early 1990s have made it one of the world’s most attractive and efficient centres for the treatment of the illnesses of children and for research into the diseases that afflict them. The healing, renewal, and prevention achieved day by day through the work of members of the hospital more than fulfil the hopes and practical aspirations of its founder, Elizabeth McMaster, and those pathfinders who worked with her. Their idealism, compassion, and intelligent attention to the medical needs of children continue to animate the hospital to which they gave birth.