In the history of modern Canadian science and medicine, Kenneth McKenize, Edward Archibald, Wilder Penfield and Harry Botterell represent the generation of medical practitioners who came into their own as neurosurgery was establishing itself in the late years of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

With the exception of Penfield, the history and literature of these pioneers is little known outside academic circles, medical archives and libraries.

But it was Kenneth McKenzie, in a life spent searching to improve his skills in diagnosis and in the operating room, who gained supremacy as a skilled surgeon and a wise and precise diagnostician. It was McKenzie who took neurosurgery out of the realm of general surgery and established it as a specialty at Toronto General Hospital, Toronto's pre-eminent teaching hospital.

In a remarkable, thirty-year career dedicated to the art and technique of neurosurgery - at a time when the successful outcome of an operation depended on neuro-anatomic knowledge, gentleness in handling nervous tissue, dexterity, dispatch and experience - McKenzie led the way as an innovator and inventor to perfect the surgeon's art.

A medical graduate of the University of Oxford, Thomas Morley served in the Royal Air Force's Medical Branch in the United Kingdom and in the Far East, was Head of Neurosurgery at Toronto General Hospital and served as Chairman of the Neurosurgical Committee at the University of Toronto. He lives in Uxbridge, Ontario.

Thomas Morley's profile page

Dr. Thomas Morley, whose achievements include following McKenzie to become head of neurosurgery at Toronto General Hospital, has produced an enjoyable and lucidly written portrait of a man, his family, his specialty, his hospital, and the profession he loved so ardently.

-- Canadian Book Review Annual