Shelley McKellar's Surgical Limits chronicles the life of one of Canada's most prominent and controversial surgeons, Gordon Murray (1894-1976). McKellar examines candidly and critically the career successes and failures of Gordon Murray, discussing Murray's surgical ingenuity and skill, and how he saved numerous lives through his advances in heart and vascular surgery, his experimental cancer treatment, and his development of a kidney dialysis machine. She also chronicles the 1967 spinal cord controversy, in which he claimed to have reversed paralysis, and the resulting theatrics...

A leading public intellectual, Michael Bliss has written prolifically for academic and popular audiences and taught at the University of Toronto from 1968 to 2006. Among his publications are a comprehensive history of the discovery of insulin, and major biographies of Frederick Banting, William Osler, and Harvey Cushing. The essays in this volume, each written by former doctoral students of Bliss, with a foreword by John Fraser and Elizabeth McCallum, do honour to his influence, and, at the same time, reflect upon the writing of history in Canada at the end of the twentieth...