ABSTRACT
Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour (1869-1940). Canadian pioneer of pathology and medical history. Born at St. Andrews East on the north shore of the Ottawa River in the province of Quebec. Her father, Jeremiah Babin, was a clergyman who abandoned the family home before Maude’s birth. Her mother, Elizabeth Abbott, died when Maude was a mere seven months old, and she and her elder sister, Alice, were adopted and brought up by their maternal grandmother. Maude was educated at home by a governess, and subsequently at a private school in Montreal. In 1885 she won a scholarship to the University of McGill. She graduated in Arts in 1890. Abbott then decided to become a doctor, but at that time women were not admitted to the McGill Faculty of Medicine. Though her campaign to gain entry was unsuccessful, she enrolled at the Medical Faculty of Bishop’s College, from which she graduated with distinction in 1894. Later that year she sailed for Europe, observing medical practice in London, Heidelberg, Berne and Interlaken, before enrolling at the University of Zurich for postgraduate work. Further studies in gynaecology and obstetrics were undertaken for two years in Vienna. In 1897 Abbott returned via Scotland to Montreal, where she set up in practice, and in the following year was appointed assistant curator (subsequently curator) of the medical museum at McGill. In 1899 she toured some of the medical museums in the United States. Her museum duties included identifying, cataloguing and lecturing on the large number of medical exhibits. She began to publish (for example in 1902 an Historical Sketch of the Medical Faculty of McGill University), and became an expert on congenital heart disease, after discovering in the museum a rare specimen of the ‘Holmes’ heart. In 1907 a fire destroyed the medical building, its books and specimens, and Abbott turned her attention to the formation of an International Association of Medical Museums. She promoted this cause by publishing Bulletins, and by travelling both in North America and in Europe. In 1910 McGill awarded her an honorary MD, and in 1913 she attended the International Congress of Medicine in London, and was appointed permanent international secretary of the Museums Association. During the First World War Abbott edited the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and between 1918 and 1922 was acting curator of the Canadian Army Medical Museum. She also continued to lecture to nurses on the history of their profession, but refused the offer of a post as professor of Pathology in the University of Texas. In 1923 she accepted the Chair of Pathology of the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on a year’s secondment from McGill. In 1926 she edited the Osler Memorial Volume (Sir William Osler died in 1919), a 600-page Bulletin of the Museum Association which attracted considerable attention. In 1936 she was retired from McGill, having reached the retirement age, and was awarded an honorary LLD. See her several writings, including McGill’s Heroic Past (1921);Atlas of Congenital Heart Disease (1936), and MacDermot, H.E., MaudeAbbott: A Memoir (1941).
