Toronto General Hospital (TGH) is one of Toronto’s oldest hospitals, dating back to 1819 when the Loyal and Patriotic Society of Upper Canada organized a trust fund to support the construction and maintenance of a hospital in the provincial capital, the Town of York. Construction began in 1820 and the General Hospital of the Town of York was opened for patients in June 1829 at Simcoe and King Streets. As Toronto General, it expanded to Gerrard and Sumach in 1856 and then to College Street in 1913. The College Street location has since become the MaRS building, while Toronto General has spread out south along University Avenue.

Among its world firsts, TGH performed the world’s first successful single lung transplant in 1983, followed by the first double-lung transplant in 1986. In 1950, the first external heart pacemaker was used in an open-heart resuscitation. And in 1922, insulin was developed and saw its first clinical use in the treatment of diabetes on a young patient at TGH.​​​