Edward William Archibald

Edward William Archibald (1872 to 1945) was a Canadian surgeon who came to be called Canada's first neurosurgeon. Born in Montreal and first educated in Grenoble, he took his medical degree at McGill University in 1896, apprenticed at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and studied for a year in Europe under Jan Mikulicz-Radecki and Victor Horsley. Tuberculosis forced him to New York for treatment, and after recovering he returned to the Royal Victoria. In 1908 he published a monograph on surgical affections and wounds of the head, then turned toward the public health problem of tuberculosis. He served as a military hospital doctor in France in the First World War, and as president of the American Surgical Association in 1935 delivered a speech credited with triggering reform of surgical education in the United States.