Edward Mulberry Hodder, M.D. 1810 - 1878

The Father of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Ontario and Dean of the Trinity Medical School

Plaque located at: 41 Spruce Street, Toronto, ON, Canada

Dr. Edward Mulberry Hodder was born December 30, 1810 in Sangate, Kent, England. He was educated on the Isle of Guernsey and in France. He became a midshipman in the Royal Navy but, after a year, he left the Navy to study medicine in London, Paris, and Edinburgh.

He married Frances Tench in 1834 and they left for Canada in 1838. He first practiced in Queenston and then moved to Toronto in 1843.

In 1850, Hodder and James Bovell founded the Upper Canada School of Medicine which subsequently became the Trinity Medical College.

He was also the medical school representative on the board of the Toronto General Hospital which stood in Cabbagetown facing Gerrard Street between Sumach and Sackville streets, from 1856 to 1913 (the building was demolished in the early 1920s).

He taught at the Toronto School of Medicine which, at the time, was at the southwest corner of Gerrard and Sackville streets (now Regent Park). The Trinity Medical College was re-established in 1871 and Hodder was elected its Dean, a position he held until his death in 1878. The College was on Cabbagetown’s Spruce Street and the building is still standing.

Dr. Hodder was President and Chair of many medical associations.

He was a respected medical practitioner. But let’s remember that medicine still had to develop further and Hodder took part in sometimes weird and dangerous experiments. For example, during the cholera epidemic of 1854, he made transfusions of milk into the veins of some patients!…

But he was mostly on the right side of medicine. How diseases were transmitted only became better understood late in the 19th century. Although Hodder was an innovator (for example, being one of the first to use carbolic acid as an antiseptic in surgery), he was mainly known as an obstetrician and gynaecologist and has been called the “Father” of these two branches of medicine in Ontario.

Together with a fellow sailing enthusiast, he founded the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.