By Dr. Allan Marble
After more than a decade of being hidden away in a damp basement, records daring back co the opening of Halifax's Victoria General Hospital (VGH) in 1887 have been restored to the Nova Scotia Archives. As the tertiary-care hospital in Nova Scotia, citizens from all pares of Nova Scotia have been cared for at the VGH, and the records describe the development of health care in Nova Scotia over a 100-year period.
The VGH was preceded by the Provincial and City Hospital, a joint undertaking between the province and the city of Halifax that provided care for Nova Scotians between 1865 and 1885. In 1885, a major dispute arose between the Provincial and City Hospital's Medical Board and the Commissioners of Public Charities, who operated the hospital; this dispute led to two years of acrimony, during which the Medical Board went on strike, refusing to staff the hospital. Each side accused the other of letting Nova Scotians down by refusing to come to an agreement and return the hospital co a normal place for care and treatment. Finally, in 1887, the provincial government assumed sole control of the hospital, putting it under the management of the Commissioner of Public Works and Mines and renaming it the VGH.
The VGH continued to maintain its records - and the historic.al records of the Provincial and City Hospital - until the 1980s, when it agreed to transfer its pre- 1970 records to the Nova Scotia Archives.
Staff at the archives prepared a derailed description of the VGH records (designated as RG25 Series B), which included: correspondence, patients' records, general medical records, surgical and operating room records, death records, financial records, supplies and purchases, texts and publications, miscellaneous and director of nursing office records. Access to the records was governed by the Freedom of Information Act and other statutes protecting individuals' privacy rights.
In 1997 a newly appointed provincial archivist decided char the VGH records were nor, in fact, government records and had them returned to the VGH. As a result, medical historians no longer had access to the records, which had been locked away somewhere in a hospital building.
Fifteen years lacer, I finally found the records in a storage room belonging to the VGH Nurses' Alumni Archives, in the MacKenzie Pathology Building. The files were in disarray on the damp cement floor; the wee environment had caused them co develop mould.
With the permission of the VGH Nurses' Alumni, I approached Chris Power, CEO of Capital Health, who agreed co have the records remediated; Lois Yorke, the current Provincial Archivist, then agreed they should be returned to the Nova Scotia Archives. However, as the result of the recently passed Health .Information Act, only the records for the period 1867 to 1895 will be transferred to the Nova Scotia Archives. The records covering the period 1896 to 1970 will remain in a clean environment in a VGH building until government authorities find them a permanent home.
