Pugwash Review
by S. William Gunn

by Allan Irving

ISBN 1-55041-1846
Fitzhenry and Whiteside, Markham, Canada 1998
149 pages

 

AS a young surgeon practising in Nova Scotia, Pugwash was not unknown to me but the surprise was great when the news spread that this sleepy village was holding a high-level scientific meeting hosted by Cyrus Eaton. The little fishing community, however seemed less surprised as, for them, their local boy now a famous American tycoon, receiving scientists from around the world, "could do anything". Indeed more than that, it became evident over the years that the 22 guests initially gathered there to discuss the Russell-Einstein Manifesto could also do great things, their brainstorming, enlightened advocacy and continuous action eventually being rewarded by the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

Among that first Pugwash group was a Canadian physician, Dr. George Brock Chisholm, well known and respected worldwide as one of the architects of the United Nations, first Director-General of the World Health Organization and a freethinking internationalist, less known or perhaps wrongly remembered in Canada as "the man who killed Santa Claus". His biography has recently been published by the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine in Toronto.

Brock Chisholm -- Doctor to the World traces quite chronologically the life of this Canadian, born in 1896 and died in 1971, after a full career of medical and social, military and pacific, national and international achievements. It describes his growth and maturation, his bravery in World War I, his medical studies, general practice and interest in psychiatry until World War II, his distinguished administrative career and military ascension to the rank of Major General, and thence to higher civil service as Deputy Minister of Health. These national contributions would be remarkable for any man, yet Chisholm enriched and expanded them with international service and it is these overseas distinctions, initially at the United Nations and subsequently at the World Health Organization and in the world at large, that constitute his undoubted fame worldwide, and which earned him an invitation from Lord Russell to the initial historic meeting at Pugwash.

After having fully contributed to the growth of his country, the country that Chisholm was now working for was the entire world, with its strengths and weaknesses, its myths and realities, accords and rivalries and tensions, the international community and the promise of youth, the world population of the healthy and the sick, the rapprochement of the wealthy and the poor, the contribution of health as a bridge to peace, and the action of men and women for a more just society. And that for him was the World Health Organization. It still is, as his legacy. Here he firmly anchored his revolutionary concept of "health", ably moulded a multinational esprit de corps, broke down imperialistic and nationalistic boundaries -- at least as far as health was concerned, and affirmed the conviction that there can be no real peace unless mankind took its destiny in its own hands in an enlightened way. This was the message besides, of course, the technical aspects of world health for which WHO was primarily set up. There was no dichotomy between pragmatic and idealistic action; as in the 50th Anniversary Brock Chisholm oration when Director-General Emeritus Halfdan Mahler qualified Chisholm's mission as being both "soaring and down to earth".

Present at the United Nations from its embryonic days (San Francisco Conference, 1945), through the Technical Preparatory Committee (1946) discussing post-war health reconstruction, the interim Commission (1946-48) and finally at the first World Health Assembly (1948) when he was elected Director-General, Chisholm toiled tirelessly to establish, ensure and strengthen the mission of the new Health Organization which even owes its name "World" to him. Once a military leader, now a health promoting and peacemaking chief, he undertook the task systematically, relentlessly, diplomatically yet firmly, putting mankind always in the middle of his preoccupations. Witness his speech at the first Pugwash gathering: one of two medical men among a predominantly physicists' galaxy, Chisholm began his contribution right away by saying "I want to talk about another kind of background, other than radiation", the background of human and social well-being. And throughout all his work and pronouncements, his dignity and humility are recounted by all who met him. I recall being impressed by this when, before joining WHO I paid him a courtesy call in his peaceful retirement home near Victoria, British Columbia. In our conversation on the mission of WHO, his friends in Geneva, the UN, youth, weapons of mass destruction and peace, his legendary modesty gave no hint at all of his having received, that very day, the country's highest accolade, Companion of the Order of Canada, that I only learned of as I read the papers on the ferry back to Vancouver. Yet some people found him complex.

Irving devotes a little under half of the book to Chisholm's international life. The facts are recorded, but considering the special importance of this sector of the man's life and contributions, a more extensive and analytical study could have been expected. Chisholm was well versed in receiving from all parts of the world health reports and acting on them. But the devastating reports from Hiroshima and Nagasaki could not fit into a cold organigram pattern and an increasingly peace-promoting anti-nuclear stand had to be taken, which Chisholm did with growing conviction. He energetically promoted World Federalism (that is now in part being answered by the European Union), became a director of the Canadian Peace Research Institute (with Nobel Prize associations through Lester Pearson as, later, with Pugwash), urged the creation of an international police force (as now being envisaged by Kofi Annan of the UN) and emphasized the necessity of international humanitarian action (as later established through the Department of UN Humanitarian Affairs and, more recently the foundation of the International Association for Humanitarian Medicine that bears his name). To borrow a term from another Canadian internationalist, he was truly a physician peacemonger. Pending a deeper study of this superior man, Irving's slim volume provides considerable information on this remarkable Pugwashite.

S. William Gunn, a Canadian physician who joined WHO, is currently President of the International Association for Humanitarian Medicine Brock Chisholm, in Switzerland.