Professor George Weisz joined 海角社区 in 1978. On 2 June 2017, 海角社区 PhD student Cynthia Tang talked with Professor Weisz about the founding of the department. The text below is excerpted from the transcript of the conversation between Weisz and Tang, lighted edited by Andrea Tone for clarity and length.
Recruiting Don Bates
Don came in 1966. [海角社区] needed an Osler Librarian. They were looking for an MD [and] for somebody who was an historian. The history of medicine was a really small field in the 1960s and one of the few places that was training graduate historians in medicine, often MDs, was the Institute at [Johns] Hopkins. There really weren鈥檛 a lot of [applicants]. And he was a Canadian -- I don鈥檛 know whether the fact that he was a Canadian was a major factor. He was very compelling. He was a very articulate and thoughtful guy. And he was very, very impressive.
He took the job as Osler Librarian on condition that a department for the history of medicine be created. [Don] was the Department of the History of Medicine for quite a long time. He almost immediately became very bored with the history of medicine. Don was a restless guy. It took him almost 12 or 13 years to write his dissertation and then he didn鈥檛 publish it.
Creating SSoM
When he started, there was an anthropologist who was only here for a few years. He and Don taught a course together and I think Don had an associate position in the Epidemiology Department and I guess he was working, to some degree, with Joe Lella. And so Joe came in 鈥�75. I may not have the chronology right, but probably around 鈥�75, 鈥�76, the Medical Faculty started [offering] big behavioral science and social science courses. And my guess is that they were the [pretext] for hiring Margaret [Lock] in 鈥�77 and me in 鈥�78. Because by the time I came, Margaret was teaching a full-year behavioral science course.
Don and I eventually took over. Don was teaching a three-month course for second-year students and we had an elective that we gave to fourth-year students, so we were really doing a lot of teaching, which was one [reason] for expanding. Another was that Don was very, very convincing. He was an MD. He hadn鈥檛 practiced. That鈥檚 not true, he practiced a little. He spent six months in Labrador. But he hadn鈥檛 really practiced much medicine. But he was extremely active at the Faculty level. He was involved in all the major discussions. He took very strong positions. He was a real player. He convinced Sam Freedman, who was then Dean, that there was a need for this kind of department.
Research & recognition
It was really crazy that a four-person department was doing all of these basic courses in a Medical Faculty. We were teaching 10% of the curriculum at one point. We gradually retreated from the teaching. It was taken over by the Faculty, where it should be.
There was a conscious effort from the early 1980s on to become a more research department. We wanted to do research and teach graduate students, among other things so we gave up much of the teaching. We still kept the History of Medicine course. We still kept the elective. We didn鈥檛 give up our teaching altogether, but we gave up the really big courses.
Don hired people who were deeply committed to research. And he himself, after leaving it for almost 15 years, decided that he wanted to go back to research. By the 1980s when Margaret, I, and later Alberto [Cambrosio] came, publishing wise we were a very well-known department.
A guy named Fred Hafferty, who is very involved in medical education, professionalism, & physicianship, asked to meet with us. His essential question was, how come we鈥檝e been so successful? Both Abe [Fuks, Dean of Medicine]] and Dick Cruess, Abe鈥檚 predecessor, were there, and we were talking about the history of the department. Both Dick and Abe focused on the fact that we were really successful intellectually.
I remember when Don stepped down as Chair and I was on the committee to replace him with Joe Lella. Somebody claimed we were too soft and tried to convince the Dean that maybe [Don] wasn鈥檛 worth replacing. The Dean just ignored him. Where it counted, the Deanery -- we always had [its] support. One Dean after another supported us.
Interdisciplinarity
The shape of the department really did reflect Don鈥檚 thinking. He had this vision of disciplines that fit in together. So there was history, there was very much anthropology, and there was a certain kind of qualitative sociology that he thought fit. It was his vision that it [be] a three-discipline department. He resisted adding psychologists or economists, because he felt that people really needed to talk to each other.
It was a really great department. I mean, I remember waking up for years and years thinking just how lucky I was that I was in this department. You know, other departments were having major fights, major battles, and here everybody got along extremely well and liked each other.