Gilbert Girdwood

Who is Gilbert Girdwood?

Gilbert Prout Girdwood was a Canadian army and civilian physician and surgeon, academic and author. He was a pioneer in medical education and radiography in Canada.

Girdwood was born at Paddington, London, the son of Gilbert Finley Girdwood, a physician in general practice and his wife Susan Sophia Bazeley, daughter of Thomas Bazeley, rector of Lavenham, who had been chaplain to Prince Edward Augustus. He was educated privately in London and entered University College, London in 1851 and then St George’s Hospital Medical School. He studied chemistry in London and Liverpool, and with a London chemist named Rodgers, developed a procedure for detecting strychnine in the human body. He was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1854.

Girdwood began in surgery at the Liverpool Infirmary and on 24 November 1854 joined the army as assistant surgeon in the Grenadier Guards. At the time of the Trent Affair he was sent with his battalion to Canada on 19 December 1861. He returned to England in September 1864 and then left the army in order to settle permanently to Montreal. He practised medicine for several months at the Montreal Dispensary. In 1865, he graduated from McGill College and was appointed surgeon to the military prison in Montreal. In 1866 he helped defend the colony against the Fenian raids as surgeon to the 3rd Battalion of Victoria Volunteer Rifles of Montreal. He was promoted to become medical staff officer in the Canadian militia. In the same year, he was hired as a health officer by the city of Montreal to prevent a cholera epidemic. In April 1869 with Francis Wayland Campbell and Edward H. Trenholme he helped found the Society of the Montreal Hospital for Sick Children and he became consulting physician to the hospital. He also held the post of chief physician for the eastern division of the Canadian Pacific Railway during its construction. He gave private lessons in medical chemistry at his home on Rue de La Gauchetière to medical students from McGill College around 1870. He appreciated the importance of this practical teaching for students. In 1872 he was appointed senior lecturer in practical chemistry the faculty of medicine at McGill College. From 1875, he practised as a surgeon at Montreal General Hospital. In 1879, he was made tenured professor of chemistry at McGill and held the position until 1902 when he then was given the honorary title of emeritus professor.