Feds honour Dr. Maude

Susan Pinker

The oak-panelled shelves and display cases containing Dr. Maude Abbott‚s pathology slides were a fitting backdrop for unveiling a Historic Sites and Monuments brass plaque and oil portrait in honour of one of Canada‚s first female physicians. The unveiling took place Mar. 10 at McGill‚s Osler Library.

A pathologist who became world renowned for her pioneering work in abnormalities of the heart, Abbott obtained her medical degree in 1894. At the time, few women pursued medical careers in Canada or elsewhere. Abbott, one of the first women to teach medicine at McGill, also became curator of the university‚s pathology museum. She was the first to use its specimens to teach medical students, a practice that Dr. Abraham Fuks, McGill‚s dean of medicine, said continues to this day.

”When I first read the story of that woman, I found it unbelievable,” said federal cabinet minister Lucienne Robillard, who attended the unveiling. ”How did she succeed at that time?”

Abbott, who was called ”the beneficent tornado” by one of the speakers, helped found the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, which began as a meeting of 6 women sitting on the grass after a CMA meeting. The group now has more than 2000 members.

Some of the retired physicians present at the standing-room only ceremony remembered not only her achievements but her travails. ”Her work studying congenital heart malformations formed the basis of the initiation to cardiac surgery,” said Dr. Sean Moore, professor emeritus of pathology, ”yet she had a problem getting a clinical clerkship.”

”It‚s a pity she couldn‚t get into medicine at McGill because she was a woman, and had to go to Bishop‚s,” added Dr. H.J. Scott, a retired cardiac surgeon who was on McGill‚s faculty of medicine for more than 35 years.