Book excerpt: The University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine is North America’s largest medical school and a major health consortium, boasting nine affiliated teaching hospitals and a network of research institutes. It is where insulin was pioneered, stem cells were first discovered, and famous physicians from Vincent Lam to Sheela Basrur began their careers. But despite all its major accomplishments, the faculty’s impressive history has never before been comprehensively documented. In Partnership for Excellence, senior medical historian and award-winning author Edward Shorter details the Faculty of Medicine’s history from its inception as a small provincial school to its present day status as an international powerhouse. Deeply researched through front-line interviews and primary sources, it ties the story of the faculty and its teaching hospitals to the general history of medicine over this period. Shorter emphasizes the enormous concentration of intellectual energy in the faculty that has allowed it to become the dominant force in Canadian medicine, home to a legion of medical pioneers and achievements.