Fonds Description
Title
Harold Nathan Segall fonds
Dates
1908-1990
Physical extent
180.44 m of textual records and other material
Archival description
Biographical sketch
Born to a Jewish family in Jassy, Romania on October 17, 1897, Harold Nathan Segall immigrated to Montreal with his family in 1900. Harold, his older brother Jack "Jerry" Segall (1894-1966), and his sister Jennie Segall Diner (1904-1988) were all educated in Montreal, and were raised to be fluent in their native Yiddish as well as Montreal's two dominant languages. Entering McGill medical school in 1915, Dr. Segall took five years to complete his basic medical training, serving for a year as a Royal Canadian Navy doctor on a merchant marine ship during the First World War. He graduated from McGill Medical School in 1920, after which he became a Demonstrator in Pathology at McGill and worked with Maude Abbott. Leaving Montreal in 1922 to obtain specialized training in the diseases of the heart in Boston, London and Vienna, he returned to Montreal in 1926 as the city's first fully trained cardiologist. Starting his medical practice upon his return, Dr. Segall also accepted a junior post at McGill and launched one of Canada's first cardiac clinics at the Montreal General Hospital. He opened additional cardiac clinics at the Herzel Dispensary and the Women's General Hospital, in the late 1920s. As part of his practice, he not only saw patients in his office, but made regular house calls, being the first physician in Montreal to have a portable electrocardiograph (ECG), which he acquired in 1927. Also central to his practice and his teaching was the graphic means of depicting heart sounds and murmurs which he had invented in the 1930s and used throughout his career.
As a prominent Jewish doctor in Montreal during the 1920s and 30s, Dr. Segall participated in the founding of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, eventually becoming the hospital's Head of Cardiology. Giving lectures both at the hospital and McGill to students, interns, and practitioners, Dr. Segall acted as a McGill Assistant Professor of Medicine from 1949 until 1960. He was also an influential founding member of the Montreal Cardiac Society in 1946, the Canadian Heart Association in 1947, the Canadian Heart Foundation, the Quebec Heart Foundation, and the Quebec Association of Cardiologists. Indeed, Dr. Segall acted as president of the Canadian Heart Association, the Montreal Cardiac Society, and the Quebec Heart Foundation, as well as vice-president of the Canadian Heart Foundation.
Based in Montreal's neighbourhood of Côte des Neiges, Dr. Segall's family consisted of his wife, Dorothy Violet "Dolly" Caplin, whom he married in Montreal in 1934, as well as their two children, Carol Tova Segall (born 15 Nov. 1934) and Jack Oba Segall (born 20 Nov. 1936). Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the 1950s, Mrs. Segall was permanently hospitalized from 1968 until her death in 1983.
Throughout his career and into his retirement, Dr. Segall took a great interest in the history of medicine, particularly the history of cardiology and auscultation. In addition to his numerous published medical articles, he also wrote many works on the history of medicine, including numerous articles, pamphlets, and two books. Furthermore, he was a curator of McGill's Osler Library of the History of Medicine, an honourary member of McGill's Osler Society, and was often asked to speak on the history of his field.
Retiring in 1984, Dr. Segall remained active and involved in his community and his field throughout the 1980s and beyond. He died in 1990 in Montreal at the age of 92.
Custodial history
The contents of the fonds were donated to the Osler Library by Dr. Segall through four different accessions: June 1975 (old accession #530), 9 March 1977 (old accession #558), 1978 (old accession #636), and 14 December 1979 (old accession #638). Much of this material was originally stored with the McGill University Archives and has been moved and reboxed several times. Thus, the contents of the archival boxes in which the fonds are stored many not reflect the fonds' original order of arrangement.
Scope and content
The fonds largely document Dr. Segall's professional activities as a cardiologist. It contains correspondence, notes, experimental notebooks, lecture notes, articles, speeches, patients' records, electrocardiograms, reprints and material pertaining to the Louis Gross Memorial Lectures, 1922-1979. Also included are several electrocardiograph machines, dictation devices, and audio recordings (reel-to-reel tapes, dictation disks, and cassette tapes). In addition, the fonds contain records of Dr. Segall's personal and family correspondence, financial transactions, and various other official and unofficial documents.
Notes
Source of supplied title proper
Title based on the documents in the fonds.
Physical condition
Although some patient and office files have been well maintained, many are not well ordered. While the fonds' series do indicate the boxes in which material from a particular series can be found, the contents of those boxes may be highly disorganized and include materials from several series.
Finding aids
For a description of the fonds' twenty-two (22) series (A-V) see the Series Descriptions page of this electronic finding aid.
Language
The documents are mainly in English and there are some in Hebrew and in French.
Retrieval Number
P109
Series
For a description of the fonds' twenty-two (22) series (A-V) see the Series Descriptions page of this finding aid.