Halifax and the precipitate birth of pediatric surgery

• Published in: Pediatrics (Evanston) Vol. 77; no. 5; p. 764
• Main Author: GOLDBLOOM, R. B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elk Grove Village, IL American Academy of Pediatrics 01-05-1986
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Exact sciences and technology; Explosions; General Surgery - history; History of medicine; History, 20th Century; Humans; Medical sciences; Nova Scotia; Other techniques and industries; Pediatrics - history; Surgery (general aspects). Transplantations, organ and tissue grafts. Graft diseases; Nova Scotia; Human; Child; Case history; Surgery
• ISSN: 0031-4005; 1098-4275
• DOI: 10.1542/peds.77.5.764

Several years ago, while attending the annual music festival in Marlboro, VT, I had the good fortune to renew acquaintanceship with Dr Robert Gross, who was living nearby in retirement. When I had been a Senior Medical Resident at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston in 1951, Dr Gross was Chief of Surgery and was justifiably regarded as the leading pediatric surgeon of his era. The textbook on pediatric surgery, which he had co-authored years earlier with his predecessor, Dr William Ladd, was considered the authoritative reference on the subject. In those days, we medical residents did not have too much contact with the senior surgeons, and we were certainly overawed by Dr Gross. Thus, I was amazed that some 25 years later Dr Gross seemed to remember that I had moved from Montreal to Halifax a few years earlier.
"I suppose you know," he said, "that Halifax was the birth place of pediatric surgery as a specialty."
This announcement came as a revelation, and on subsequent inquiry, I discovered that it was also news to fellow pediatric Haligonians, both medical and surgical. Dr Gross informed me that the seminal event was the great Halifax Explosion of 1917—a tragedy whose anniversary is still marked annually in Halifax.
On December 6, 1917, a French munitions ship, the Mont Blanc collided with the Norwegian vessel, Imo, in the narrows of Halifax harbor. There resulted the most powerful man-made explosion in history prior to the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Almost 2,000 men, women, and children were killed and 9,000 were injured, including 199 who were blinded.