William Canniff

William Canniff was a Canadian surgeon, public health pioneer and historian, born in Thurlow, Upper Canada, on 20 June 1830 and died in Belleville, Ontario, on 18 October 1910. He trained in medicine in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Europe, studying at the Victoria College Medical School from 1852 and spending periods in New York, London, Edinburgh, Dublin and Paris. He joined the Victoria School faculty in 1859 as lecturer in pathology and was soon promoted to professor of surgery. In 1866 he wrote a manual of the principles of surgery based on pathology, which the Wikipedia article calls the first Canadian textbook on pathology, and he was a founding member of the Canadian Medical Association in 1867 and the Ontario Medical Association in 1880. In 1883 he became the first permanent Medical Officer of Health of Toronto, where he argued for hygienic waste-water disposal and a central drinking water supply, before resigning in 1890 amid resistance to disease reporting and criticism from city council. He also belonged to the Canada First movement and wrote histories of the settlement of Upper Canada.