John Rolph

featured Wiki of the Day

fWotD Episode 2686: John Rolph
Welcome to Featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia’s finest articles.
The featured article for Wednesday, 11 September 2024 is John Rolph.
John Rolph (4 March 1793 – 19 October 1870) was a Canadian physician, lawyer, and political figure. As a politician, he was considered the leader of the Reform faction in the 1820s and helped plan the Upper Canada Rebellion. As a doctor, he founded several medical schools and incorporated new teaching techniques and medical procedures into his lectures. However, his actions against rival medical schools decreased public confidence in the ability of medical professionals to regulate themselves.
Rolph grew up in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and was educated in medicine and law. He immigrated to Upper Canada in 1813 and lived on his father's farm in Port Talbot, where he practised law and medicine concurrently and opened a medical school called the Talbot Dispensary. In 1824, Rolph was elected to the Parliament of Upper Canada and returned to England to petition the Colonial Office to allow the naturalization of American citizens in Canada. He was elected as an alderman to Toronto's first city council, though he resigned after his council colleagues did not select him to be the city's mayor.
William Lyon Mackenzie persuaded Rolph to support the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837. When the rebellion began, Rolph did not join the rebels at their headquarters and the Lieutenant Governor appointed him as his emissary to deliver the government's offer of a truce. Rolph fled to the US after the rebellion and focused on practising and teaching medicine. The Canadian government granted him amnesty and he returned to Canada in 1843, later creating a new medical institution called the Rolph School in Toronto. In 1851 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and focused on his political career; upon the formation of the Morin-MacNab administration three years later, Rolph's priority returned to running his school. He retired as dean of his medical school in 1870 and died later that year after suffering a stroke.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:01 UTC on Wednesday, 11 September 2024.
For the full current version of the article, see John Rolph on Wikipedia.
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