Maude Abbott and the “Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease”

Abstract

The Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease, which was first published by Maude Abbott in 1936, is a landmark in the field. To commemorate the book, as well as Abbott herself, the republication of the atlas has been undertaken as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the International Association of Medical Museums (currently known as the International Academy of Pathology), which she cofounded in 1906. This article gives a brief history of Abbott’s professional life and reviews the background behind the development of her most famous publication. Maude Abbott was born in St. Andrew’s East, a small town in western Quebec, in 1869 [1,2]. She had sufficient ambition and a good fortune to enable her to attend McGill University, where she was one of the first women to obtain a bachelor’s degree in arts. After being refused admission to the McGill Medical School, she decided to attend Bishop’s College, from which she received her medical degree in 1894, taking the Senior Prize in anatomy and the Chancellor’s Prize for the best examination in the final sessions. Following postgraduate studies in Europe, she returned to Montreal where she met the Chair of Pathology at McGill University, Dr. George Adami. He invited her to study a case of hemochromatosis and was so impressed with this and her other works that he appointed her Assistant Curator of the McGill Medical Museum in 1898. The museum curatorship, which she took over completely in 1901, proved to be the central point of her academic life, with the development and cataloging of its collection, the founding and running of the Association of Medical Museums, and the study of congenital heart disease all having their basis in this function. The McGill Medical Museum was in a state of disarray at the end of the 19th century. Adami suggested to Abbott that she visit some of the museums at teaching centers in the