Vincent Lam | |
---|---|
Born | London, Ontario, Canada | September 5, 1974
Occupation | Short story writer, novelist, medical doctor |
Period | 2000s–present |
Notable works | Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures |
Spouse | Margarita Lam Antoniades |
Website | |
www |
Vincent Lam (born September 5, 1974) is a Canadian writer and medical doctor.
Born in London, Ontario, and raised in Ottawa, Lam's parents came to Canada from the Chinese expatriate community in Vietnam. He attended St. Pius X High School and did his medical training at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1999.[ citation needed ] [1]
Lam worked as an emergency physician at Toronto East General Hospital [2] and has done international air evacuation work and expedition medicine on Arctic and Antarctic ships. [3] He is currently working as an addictions physician at Coderix Medical Clinic.
Lam's first book Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is based on his experiences in medical school. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's most prestigious literary award, on November 7, 2006. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures was also a finalist for The Story Prize in 2008. His second book, the Flu Pandemic and You, which was co-authored by Colin Lee, was published in 2008.
Following Lam's Giller win, Shaftesbury Films announced that it had reached a deal to adapt Bloodletting into a television series, [4] which debuted in January 2010 on HBO Canada.
Lam published a biography of Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, as part of Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians series of historical biographies. [5]
His first novel, The Headmaster's Wager, was published in 2012 by Doubleday Canada and has been shortlisted for the 2012 Governor General's Literary Award. [6]
Lam currently lives with his wife and three children in Toronto. [7]
Bloodletting is the withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness and disease. Bloodletting, whether by a physician or by leeches, was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluids were regarded as "humours" that had to remain in proper balance to maintain health. It is the most common medical practice performed by surgeons from antiquity until the late 19th century, a span of over 2,000 years. In Europe, the practice continued to be relatively common until the end of the 19th century. The practice has now been abandoned by modern-style medicine for all except a few very specific medical conditions. In the beginning of the 19th century, studies had begun to show the harmful effects of bloodletting.
Sir Frederick Grant Banting was a Canadian pharmacologist, orthopedist, and field surgeon. For his co-discovery of insulin and its therapeutic potential, Banting was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with John Macleod.
Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet, was a Canadian physician and one of the "Big Four" founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osler created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians. He has frequently been described as the Father of Modern Medicine and one of the "greatest diagnosticians ever to wield a stethoscope". In addition to being a physician he was a bibliophile, historian, author, and renowned practical joker. He was passionate about medical libraries and medical history, having founded the History of Medicine Society, at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. He was also instrumental in founding the Medical Library Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Association of Medical Librarians along with three other people, including Margaret Charlton, the medical librarian of his alma mater, McGill University. He left his own large history of medicine library to McGill, where it became the Osler Library.
Thomas Clement Douglas was a Scottish-born Canadian politician who served as the seventh premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961 and Leader of the New Democratic Party from 1961 to 1971. A Baptist minister, he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1935 as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). He left federal politics to become Leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan. His government introduced the continent's first single-payer, universal health care program.
The Canadian Medical Association Journal is a peer-reviewed open-access general medical journal published by the Canadian Medical Association. It publishes original clinical research, analyses and reviews, news, practice updates, and editorials.
Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott was a Canadian physician, among Canada's earliest female medical graduates, and an internationally known expert on congenital heart disease. She was one of the first women to obtain a BA from McGill University.
St. Pius X High School is a secondary school in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1958, the school, operated by the publicly funded Ottawa Catholic School Board, teaches grades 9-12. As of March, enrollment stood at around 833 students.
Jason Sherman is a Canadian playwright and screenwriter.
Canadianism or Canadian patriotism refers to a patriotism involving cultural attachment of Canadians to Canada as their homeland. It has been identified as related, though in some cases distinct, to Canadian nationalism. In contemporary times, this patriotism has commonly emphasized Canada as a multicultural cosmopolitan society.
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures is a short story collection by Vincent Lam, published in 2006. The book, inspired by Lam's own experiences in medical school and as a professional physician, is a volume of interconnected short stories about the lives and relationships of Fitzgerald, Ming, Chen and Sri, four young medical students in Toronto.
Shaftesbury Films is a film, television and digital media production company founded by Christina Jennings in 1987. It is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization that provides legal defence, liability protection, and risk-management education for physicians in Canada. The CMPA also provides compensation to patients and their families proven to have been harmed by negligent medical care. In 2016, the CMPA's membership list totaled 95,691 physicians.
Hospitals in Canada were initially places which cared for the poor as those with higher socioeconomic status were cared for at home. In Quebec during the 18th century, a series of charitable institutions, many set up by Catholic religious orders, provided such care.
David George Gratzer is a physician, columnist, author, Congressional expert witness; he was a senior fellow at both the Manhattan Institute and the Montreal Economic Institute. Though he has written essays on topics as diverse as obesity and political campaigns, he is best known for his first book, published by ECW Press, when he was just 24: Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System. That book won the Donner Prize established by the Donner Canadian Foundation and was a national bestseller in his native Canada. Gratzer is a critic of the Canadian health care system, and of U.S. President Barack Obama's health care reform proposals. Gratzer was health care policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign.
Charles H. Tator is a Canadian physician.
Ian Edwin Lawman Hollands Rusted was a Canadian doctor in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Joel Lexchin is a professor emeritus at the York University Faculty of Health where he taught about pharmaceutical policy, an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, an emergency physician at the Toronto General Hospital and a Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Lexchin is the author of over 160 peer-reviewed publications.
Onye Nnorom is a Canadian physician and public health specialist. She is an assistant professor and associate program director of the public health and preventative medicine residency program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She is the Black health lead for University of Toronto's faculty of medicine, and is a former president of the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario. Her research considers public health and health inequality for Black and other marginalized communities.
Canadian Doctors for Medicare is a Canadian non-profit advocacy organization that was founded in Toronto in 2006. The organization argues against the privatization of healthcare.