The Pulse and Palette: An Art Contest is an annual contest created by the Health Sciences Library in Fall of 2023 to engage the McMaster community, and to promote the library’s Graphic Medicine initiatives. The contest invites the McMaster community to showcase their talents and engage others through expressive storytelling. Each participant of the contest submits their art digitally with a corresponding description or story relating to the art piece, which is then featured in an online exhibit where the art is voted on to win a 1st or 2nd prize. The winning art pieces are then promoted via the Health Sciences Library's newsletter "HSL Happenings" and on social media platforms.
Participants are offered the option to deposit their art in the Health Sciences Archives as part of the Pulse and Palette Art Contest collection, where the art and corresponding stories/descriptions can be preserved and made accessible for educational and research purposes.
"Pedagogue" was a newsletter published by the Program for Educational Development. The newsletter was intended primarily for participants in the educational programs in the Health Sciences Faculty at McMaster University, though it was also received by colleagues throughout the globe.
The title of the newsletter came from the common meaning of "pedagogue" as a teacher and pedagogy referring to the study of the learning-teaching process. Both terms are derived from the root term "ped" meaning foot, and a pedagogue symbolically made footprints for learners to follow. The aim of the newsletter was to document the educational adventures of the faculty and to collectively grow in educational experiences.
The original newsletter logo was a yellow footprint with "Pedagogue" in burgundy title overtop. In 1989, the logo and layout was updated and the footprint removed. The updated logo featured the title in bold justified burgundy letters overtop of thin burgundy lines.
Dr. Arthur (Art) Lesser (1932-2017) was a psychiatrist and a member of McMaster's Department of Psychiatry from 1969-1988.
Charles (Chuck) Gordon Roland was a physician, writer, medical historian, and the first Hannah Chair for the History of Medicine at McMaster University. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1933, Dr. Roland studied at the University of Toronto before completing his medical degree at the University of Manitoba. He was a general practitioner in Tillsonburg and Grimsby, Ontario from 1958 to 1964. Following this, Dr. Roland took various roles in teaching, writing, and editing in America, including senior editorship at the Journal of the American Medical Association, lecturing at Northwestern University, and assisting in developing the Mayo Clinic’s medical school, initially holding associate professorship prior to chairing its Department of Biomedical Communications. He became the inaugural Hannah Professor for the History of Medicine at McMaster University in 1977, and retired in 1999. Dr. Roland passed on June 9, 2009, at the age of 76.
Dr. Roland’s research and writing produced a large corpus of work, and he was involved with various associations during his career, including the Toronto Medical History Society and the American Osler Society. Dr. Roland conducted over three hundred oral history interviews pertaining to the history of medicine in wartime, in Canada, and the formation of McMaster University’s School of Medicine. His extensive work regarding wartime medicine in particular produced two monographs about the clandestine Warsaw ghetto medical school, and the experiences of Prisoners-of-War in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. His other research interests included the medical histories of Canada and Hamilton, and Sir William Osler.
Dr. Roland’s published works include biographies of notable figures in Canadian medical history, Courage under Siege: starvation, disease, and death in the Warsaw ghetto, Long Night’s Journey into Day, bibliographies in the history of Canadian medicine, and many publications related to his research on Sir William Osler. Dr. Roland edited and/or wrote for the Journal of the American Medical Association, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Clinical Cardiology, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, the Journal of Anesthesia and Analgesia, and various other medical journals.
Dr. May Cohen (b. 1931) is a family physician, educator, activist, researcher, former university administrator, and advocate of women physicians and women’s health.
Cohen was born in Montréal and raised in Toronto. Her parents—Sam and Manya Lipshitz—were Jewish émigrés to Canada from Eastern Europe and progressive political activists. At an early age, Cohen resolved to become a doctor. She graduated from high school as the top student in Ontario. Cohen attended medical school at the University of Toronto where less than ten percent of medical students were women. In 1955, she graduated at the top of her class and earned a gold medal for academic excellence.
For twenty years, Cohen practiced family medicine in Toronto with her husband, Dr. Gerald (Gerry) S. Cohen (1931-2017; m. 1952). The couple also raised three sons during this time.
Abortion was illegal in Canada when Cohen began her career. Though most of her patients were able to travel to England for a legal abortion, it became clear to her that the law was problematic when one of her patients died from complications of an illegal abortion. Women should have the right to autonomy over their own bodies, Cohen argued. After the law was amended in 1969 to allow abortion under certain circumstances, she joined the abortion decision committee at Branson Hospital and fought for access to legal and safe abortions for Canadian women. She became a prominent voice in debates surrounding the right of women to choose abortion.
In 1975—International Women’s Year—Cohen traveled to Shelburne, Nova Scotia to lead a workshop on women’s health as part of a project funded by the Canadian government. There, she came to realize that women living in some areas of the country did not have access to routine breast exams or pap smears. From here on, Cohen campaigned to ensure that women’s health needs were being appropriately met across Canada.
Two years later, Cohen was appointed to the Department of Family Medicine in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University.
From 1987-1988, while on sabbatical, Cohen travelled to Australia to deliver seminars to doctors on how to discuss human sexuality with their patients. There, she learned of an ongoing study investigating women’s health needs in each state. Inspired by this effort, upon her return, Cohen spearheaded the development of a Women’s Health Office at McMaster. Founded in 1991, this office was the first of its kind in any Canadian medical school. Its mandate was to research and raise awareness of diseases that affect women differently. Several other Canadian medical schools subsequently decided to found similar offices. A group of academics from the five Ontario medical schools was eventually formed, called the Women’s Health Inter School Curriculum Committee (WHISCC), to pursue a united effort.
In 1990 and 1991, Cohen served as President of the Federation of Medical Women in Canada. Between 1991 and 1996, she served the Faculty of Health Sciences as Associate Dean of Health Services. She is now retired and lives in Toronto.
A pioneer of women’s health and a champion of gender-based healthcare, Cohen has called on the medical profession to reconsider its approach to women’s health concerns and to recognise the particularities of women’s health. She has advocated the right of a woman to make decisions regarding her own health. She has also played an important role in raising awareness and advancing the treatment of women’s health issues ranging from cancer to domestic abuse.
Cohen has advocated gender equality within the medical profession and has broken down barriers for women physicians. She has challenged the male-centric paradigm in medicine and has called on medical schools to include women’s health in their curricula. She is also a pioneer in teaching medical students and physicians about healthy sexual practices and eliminating sexual taboos and gender stereotyping.
Cohen has earned numerous prestigious awards and honours. These include the Canadian Medical Association Medal of Service and the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case. In 2016, she was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. One year later, she was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. Awards and positions named in her honour include the Eli Lilly-May Cohen Chair in Women’s Health at McMaster. In 2019, two of Cohen’s colleagues, Dr. Cheryl Levitt and Dr. Barbara Lent, released a short documentary about her called The Gender Lady: The Fabulous Dr. May Cohen.
John Bienenstock (1937-2022), born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936, was an internationally recognized physician, scientist, and academic.
Bienenstock earned his medical degree from King’s College London and Westminster Hospital Medical School in 1960, followed by a postdoctoral term at Harvard University. In 1968, he joined McMaster University’s new medical school, where he played a pivotal role in its development. He served as Chair of the Department of Pathology from 1978 to 1989, co-founded the Society for Mucosal Immunology in 1985, and served as Dean and Vice-President of the Faculty of Health Sciences from 1989 to 1996. Even after his official retirement in 1998, he continued his research as Director of the McMaster Brain Body Institute at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton until his death in 2022.
Bienenstock became a prominent figure in mucosal immunology, introducing the concept of a common mucosal immune system. He also made significant contributions to neuroimmunology, exploring the interactions between the brain and nervous system. His prolific career included over 500 peer-reviewed articles and 10 books, including a standard textbook on mucosal immunology and allergy. He mentored over 60 postdoctoral fellows and 10 doctoral students.
Bienenstock’s achievements earned him numerous honors, including becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1992, a McMaster Distinguished University Professor in 1999, a Member of the Order of Canada in 2002, and induction into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2011. He also received an honorary MD from Goteborg, Sweden, and joined the Faculty of Health Sciences Community of Distinction in 2014.
Miriam Brysk was born on March 10th, 1935, in Warsaw, Poland to Chiam Noah Miasnik and Bronka Zablocki. Her father, also known as Henry Mason, was a prominent gastric surgeon in Warsaw before the war and was referred to as the “king of the poor” by the poor Jews. After Germany invaded Poland, Miriam and her parents escaped to Lida, where her father worked as the head of surgery at the municipal hospital. In the summer of 1941, the Lida ghetto was established, where Dr. Miasnik was forced to operate on wounded German soldiers and Bonka worked in a leather factory run by the Germans. Having survived the slaughter of Lida Jews on May 8, 1942, Miriam and her family joined the underground Russian partisans in the forests in Belorussia. Dr. Miasnik was assigned to build a hospital on a small remote island surrounded by swamp where he operated on wounded partisans as chief and the only surgeon of the hospital. After their liberation by the Russian army in 1944, Dr. Miasnik was made chief of a hospital run by the Russians in a small town in Belarus before the family managed to get away from the Russian control and escaped to Poland. They travelled as refugees through Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Austria and finally reached Italy. In February 1947, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in New York where Miriam’s parents established their medical practice. Miriam finished her high school and went to New York University, where she met her husband, Henry Brysk. They have two daughters and five grandchildren.