How Much Gin in the Tonic? The Problems of Writing a Provincial Medical History

This paper describes the problems and resources involved in writing a Canadian provincial medical history, (Manitoba Medicine: A Brief History). The first decision was whether it should be a scholarly or a popular history; the authors’ background, and the realities of publishing dictated the latter. Resources available were local and easily accessible: archives and records, the Manitoba medical journals, a series of local medical journals (almost continuous for a century), and the Manitoba medical biographies, books variable in length, and content, but relating to a wide variety of physicians. Such a paper leads to a question—“Is local history merely trivial?” The answer to such a question is “no.”