The Enduring Work — and Legacy — of J.C.B. Grant
Professor Runjan Chetty's career has come full circle. As a medical student, he used Grant's Atlas of Anatomy, the seminal work of Scottish-born Dr. John Charles Boileau Grant, who would become the chair of anatomy at the University of Toronto in 1930.
Now, Chetty is the recipient of the University Health Network’s J.C.B. Grant Chair in Oncologic Pathology, named after the author of the most popular anatomy texts in the English-speaking world.
"It's strange. Using the book as a student many years ago, I'd never have thought I'd be in an institution where Grant worked or that the chair would exist, let alone that he would leave it for oncologic pathology,” says Chetty, a professor of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at U of T and the medical director of the laboratory medicine program at UHN. "But knowing the book and knowing what it represents, I feel very proud and honoured to be in this position, and to be able to use the funds to help LMP."
Grant was born near Edinburgh in 1886 and became a decorated serviceman of the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War before moving to Canada. He established himself as an ‘anatomist extraordinary’ at U of T, publishing three textbooks that form the basis of Grant's Anatomy. The textbooks are still used in anatomy classes today, and made unforgettable memories for those who found themselves in his classes nearly a century ago.
"I remember fondly Grant's lectures … the beautifully coloured blackboard diagrams created with chalk," wrote former student Dr. George Bernstein nearly a quarter century ago, in recognition of Grant's contribution to Canadian Medicine. "Grant would gesticulate like a great conjurer, as a whole region of anatomy appeared just as the surgeon would see it. Those who studied under J.C.B. never forgot him, while those who never met him desired to know him."
The J.C.B. Grant Chair in Oncologic Pathology is made possible in part by Grant's widow, Anne Catriona Robertson, who left The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation a bequest of the Atlas when she died in 1982.
Students continue to use Grant's textbooks today, and for the more artistic anatomist there's even a Grant's Anatomy Coloring Book, published in 2018.
"The person who the chair's named for reflects on you, and you reflect on them," says Aaron Schimmer, a professor of medical biophysics at U of T and research director at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. With that comes a sense of pride, Schimmer adds, as well as a desire to represent the name of the with pride.
Schimmer is a member of the selection committee that unanimously recommended Chetty for the chair based on his leadership, and on his contributions and advocacy for translational oncologic pathology research. "Everything we do on the clinical side, including all our treatments, are fundamentally based on the pathologic diagnosis," says Schimmer. "It all starts there."
The Grant chair is the first endowed chair awarded within the laboratory medicine program at UHN, which Chetty describes as a very important step. "It's acknowledgement from our clinical colleagues on the importance of pathologic research," he says.
Chetty plans to open the Grant funding to all program staff, and to chair a committee supplemented with members of UHN's research institutes to review all submitted projects and proposals. "Of course I feel quite proud and humbled by this investment," he says. "But by the same token, the most important thing for me is the quality of the research, and that the money is well and wisely spent."
Story courtesy of University Health Network Communications.
