Changes in Newfoundland medicine: a 50 year perspective
by Dr. Ian Rusted
In the next few issues of MUNMED, dean emeritus Dr. Ian
Rusted, the first dean of medicine at Memorial, offers his observations on how medicine
and healthcare have changed in the province in the last half century.
In the early 1900s, a small but significant number of outport doctors were Newfoundlanders who graduated from United Kingdom medical schools or McGill University, and after 1930 from Dalhousie University. From the mid 1930s onwards, the first Cottage Hospitals made an enormous difference, limited mainly by the fact that there was only one physician in each.
Newfoundland's population began to increase rapidly after 1945, inspite of an annual outmigration from 1956 on of about 7,000 people. At the same time, the percentage of people living in rural areas dropped, while those living in urban areas rose. One factor in the population increase was the return of several thousand verterans of World War II, including a significant number of physicians.
But even with the post-war reinforcement, there were only 180 MDs in all of Newfoundland in 1953: 77 in St. John's and 105 outside St. John's. When I began my first visits to Cottage Hospitals, in February 1953, there was only one doctor at each Cottage Hospital apart from Gander where there were two.
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