Maude Abbott

Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott (March 18, 1869-1940) was a Canadian pediatrician and cardiologist. Abbott was one of the first experts in congenital heart disease. Many people considered her the top expert in the world during her lifetime. She studied and documented the hearts from cyanotic patients. Abbott developed the international classification system for congenital heart disease. She recorded it in her Atlas of Congenital Heart Disease. Her work made it possible for medical researchers to start treating heart disease in the later Twentieth century.
Early Life and Family
Maude Abbott was born in St. Andrews East, Quebec. She was abandoned by her father at a young age. Her mother died from tuberculosis when she was young. Maude Abbott and her sister, Alice, were adopted by her 62 year old grandmother.
School
Maude Abbott got a Bachelor of Arts at McGill University. She graduated in 1890. She was one of the first women to get a Bachelor of Arts at McGill University.
Abbott wanted to be a doctor. McGill would not let women into the medical school. Abbott ran a public campaign trying to be allowed to study there. She wrote letters to the faculty. The school would not let her in.
So Abbott went to Bishop's College for medical school. She was the only woman at the school. Both students and teachers there were angry to have a woman studying medicine. Many people there were mean to her and made her studies very difficult. She worked hard anyway. She won the senior anatomy award and her excellent work earned her the chancellor's prize. She graduated in 1894.
After she graduated college, she went to London and Vienna for two years to study. Many colleagues and teachers thought she did good work. She dreamed of teaching at McGill.
Career
Abbott returned to Canada to work at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. She started researching cardiology. Dr. George Adami, the Chair of Pathology at McGill University was very impressed with her work. He made her the Assistant Curator of the McGill Medical Museum. Three years later, in 1901, she became the full curator of the museum. The museum was a collection of anatomical samples, which means it was body parts from people who had died. The collection was very messy, so Abbott organized it. Her idea was that she would group all the body parts by where they came from in the human body. She would then research each sample and collect all the information she could about it. She would have experts in certain areas of study give more information about the problem each sample encountered. Then, people could study all of the body parts, compare them, and learn more about how the body worked.
This organizational system was very strong. In fact, she learned so much from comparing different human hearts in the collection that she advanced medical science's understanding of the heart a lot. She first wrote a chapter on congenital heart disease for the book Principles and Practice of Medicine, edited by William Osler. Then she wrote the Atlas of Congenital Heart Disease, a major reference work on the human heart. The American Heart Association published it in 1936, with new editions in 1956 and 2006. This book helped medical scientists understand congenital cardiac problems. It led to treatments for these problems in the second half of the Twentieth century. Abbott was planning a textbook to add to the Atlas. She died before she could write it.
The museum was important for other reasons. Students started coming to look at the collection and learn from Abbott. They found it so useful that they praised her work to the medical school. The school started sending classes to visit, and soon all students were required to go to the museum one day a week for lessons with Abbott.
In 1906, Abbott helped found the International Association of Medical Museums. It still exists today. It is called the International Academy of Pathology.
Starting in 1919, Abbott was the editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
She still wanted to be on the faculty of the McGill Medical School. They finally allowed her to become faculty in 1936, and then forced her to retire the same year. She traveled to give lectures. She also wrote many medical histories.
Others appreciated Abbott, however. She was named a fellow at the New York Academy of Medicine. She was widely acknowledged as the world's top expert on congenital heart disease.