An Apple a Day

Disease has always been with us, and the story of the struggle to overcome it and provide care to people in their most vulnerable moments makes for a uniquely human history. An Apple a Day looks at the ordinary Canadian's experience of illness -- from garden-variety complaints to the most grisly ailments -- over the centuries, and how the dynamics of what we now call health care changed as society's ideas about healing and treatments developed.

The story moves from the early holistic medicine of the shamans who taught Jacques Cartier to boil spruce bark for scurvy through to the sophisticated scientific methods introduced in the 20th century. Uniquely Canadian topics such as the discovery of insulin and the implementation of medicare are given special emphasis. Practitioners of all types (the nursing sisters, barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and dentists, to name just a few) are included in this readable account.

A rich collection of visuals depicting key figures, events, institutions and artifacts, from archives and museums across the country, illustrate this compelling and fascinating history.