Dalla Lana School of Public Health is the school of public health at the University of Toronto. It was founded in 1927, and was home for 50 years to Connaught Laboratories, a manufacturer of vaccines, insulin, and many other pharmaceutical products. Having grown to be the largest cluster of public health scholars in Canada, the school was revitalized in 2008 with the support of a major gift from the Dalla Lana family.
Early history
Hygiene, particularly sanitation, was a component of the teaching programs at the early private medical schools in Toronto starting as early as 1871. One of the earliest recorded hygiene instructors was William Coverton, who taught sanitary sciences in the Trinity University medical school from 1878–1891. At the competing Toronto School of Medicine in the mid 1880s, William Oldright, a physician and sanitarian who served as the first chair of the Ontario Provincial Board of Health, lectured in the sanitary sciences. Following the merger of the Toronto School of Medicine with the University of Toronto, Oldright continued to teach sanitation sciences in the Faculty of Medicine and chair the Department of Hygiene until his retirement in 1910. During his tenure, Oldright established a museum of hygiene in the basement of the medical building that showcased technological developments ranging from sewage management to ventilation, water testing and personal protective equipment for workers.
Upon Oldright's retirement, John Amyot, a bacteriologist affiliated with the provincial health laboratory, was appointed chair of the Department of Hygiene and Sanitary Science in Faculty of Medicine. Like Oldright, Amyot was interested in sewage treatment and water treatment as means of controlling diseases such as typhoid. From his experience as a physician, Amyot was also a strong proponent of preventive medicine. Together with then-Medical Officer of Health JWS McCullough and Professor of Biology Robert Ramsay Wright, Amyot championed the creation of a Diploma in Public Health (DPH), emphasizing sanitation but including training in bacteriology and preventive medicine. The program was first offered in 1912, and its first graduate, Robert Defries, completed training in 1913 under Amyot's supervision.
John FitzGerald and the Antitoxin Laboratory
John G. FitzGerald completed his medical training at the University of Toronto in 1903. After spending time as a ship's physician, FitzGerald studied psychiatry in Buffalo, New York and neurology at Johns Hopkins University and bacteriology at Harvard University with brief stints abroad at the Pasteur Institute and the University of Freiburg. Upon his return to North America in 1911, FitzGerald accepted an appointment as Associate Professor of bacteriology at the University of California Berkeley – a position he held until Amyot recruited him to return to Toronto in 1913 as the first full-time faculty member of the Department of Hygiene. FitzGerald's experience in Europe made him aware of the success of antitoxins and vaccines as a means of reducing mortality. Needing laboratory space when he arrived in Toronto, FitzGerald set up to work in the Provincial Board of Health laboratory at 4 Queen's Park where he began preparing rabies vaccine using the method of Louis Pasteur, successfully eliminating its costly, daily purchase from suppliers in New York.