Early medicine and surgery in New Brunswick

The author discusses some of the major events in medicine and surgery in New Brunswick prior to 1900. The influences of Indian medicine, of early French and Acadian surgeons, of the British colonial surgeons at the siege of Fort Beausejour, of the pre-Loyalist and Loyalist surgeons all led up to the building of marine hospitals and quarantine stations. The introduction of anesthesia with ether and chloroform hastened progress towards"modern surgery" which was carried out in the many general hospitals that were built following the opening, in 1865, of New Brunswick's first general hospital, the General Public Hospital (now the saint John General Hospital).