The materials digitized for this online collection are taken from the Wilder Penfield Fonds, P142, held at McGill University's Osler Library of the History of Medicine. The Penfield fonds consists of over eighty metres of Penfield's personal and professional records dating from his childhood up until his death in 1976. The materials in the fonds include photographs, correspondence, manuscripts and drafts of publications and speeches, research notes, glass slides, bound reports, films, and academic gowns. Following Penfield's death, this material was left to the care of his colleagues at the Montreal Neurological Institute, Dr. Feindel and Dr. Theodore Rasmussen. As was outlined in Dr. Penfield's will, the collections were to be used by Dr. Feindel for a biography of Penfield. Stored at various locations on and off the McGill campus for several years, the records were eventually deposited with the Osler Library of the History of Medicine in the early 1990s. In 2011 Dr. Feindel and the family of Dr. Rasmussen officially donated the material to the Osler Library.
This digital collection was made possible through a generous grant from the R. Howard Webster Foundation, obtained by Dr. William Feindel, who sadly passed away in January 2014. It is hoped that this selection of digitized materials from the Penfield Fonds will be useful to researchers and will increase awareness of this rich archival resource.