A sampling of Maude Abbott’s wooden printing blocks, housed at Osler Library.

Last week in the archives, we made a few updates to our Maude Abbott Collection that included rehousing and preserving various media and artifacts. For students who are unfamiliar, or are discovering the work of Dr. Maude Elizabeth Abbott (1869-1940) for the first time, we encourage you to explore the Osler Library’s collection.

Maude Abbott was a true medical luminary and a pioneer for women in medicine. Her extraordinary career garnered an international reputation for excellence in pathology, as well as medical museums – particularly impressive considering she was denied entry as a young medical student to McGill’s Faculty of Medicine in 1889 because of her gender (women were not admitted to the Faculty until 1917).

William Osler was one of Abbott’s greatest mentors, and was the first to encourage her research into congenital cardiac disease. These wooden printers blocks (above) and glass lantern slides (below) represent a small sampling of the many diagrams and illustrations created for Abbott’s ground-breaking Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease, published in 1936.

A sampling of Maude Abbott’s glass slides, housed at Osler Library.