Exhibit (extended until mid-January) delves into pioneering doctor and avid reader Maude Abbott’s reading taste to better read her remarkable life and career
The exhibition “Reading Abbott,” curated by Prof. Annmarie Adams of the Department of Social Studies of Medicine, opened on May 16, 2024 at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine and runs until January 15. This exhibition explores feminist and spatial readings of Maude Abbott’s legacy, looking at what Abbott read and ways in which we can “read” her life story. Prof. Adams comments on how the exhibition “places Abbott among her favourite authors, locations, and texts. While many publications on the famous doctor and museum curator have focused on the barriers she faced in a male-dominated profession, “Reading Abbott” foregrounds her lived experience, likes, and dislikes.”
The primary sources displayed in the Osler Library exhibition come from various McGill collections: the Osler Library Archives, the McGill University Archives, Rare Books and Special Collections Library, and the Maude Abbott Medical Museum. Adams and a team of three graduate students (including myself ) from the School of Architecture have grouped the materials under the four main themes, all relating to different aspects of Abbott’s life: her relationships, mobility, reading, and writing. At the heart of the exhibition are Abbott’s five diaries. These precious journals record her daily activities, meetings, travels, meals, health, friends, books, and even her hair appointments. As the selected and exhibited items become conduits to Abbott’s everyday life as well as her extraordinary moments, the visitor is invited to travel, converse, read, and write with Dr. Abbott.
The theme of Abbott’s relationships focuses on her connection with the Osler family. Abbott and Osler were friends and colleagues, writing letters and visiting each other in Montreal, Baltimore, and Oxford, UK , among other places . This exhibit case features material artifacts and architectural representations related to the Oslers. Some writing materials from the Osler archive is alongside selected letters between Abbott and Osler, as well as a memoir on Lady Grace Revere Osler. The architectural highlight of this theme is the Oslers’ Oxford residence on a street called Norham Gardens, also known as “The Open Arms,” due to its atmosphere of conviviality. The house was designed by William Wilkinson and featured in several inf luential publications, which are showcased in the exhibit. Renovations to the house were undertaken by architect Nathaniel Harrison, whom the Oslers hired in 1907 before moving in. Abbott spent three weeks there in the spring of 1911 while recovering from phlebitis and tonsillitis.
Abbott’s expertise on medical museums and congenital heart conditions meant she was often on the move: to important world’s fairs, conferences, and influential medical venues. Her calling card was a mobile exhibit which showcased her research. She travelled to Europe and frequently to New York, Boston, a nd other cities in North America. For two years she worked in Philadelphia. Even when she was home, she mostly commuted from her childhood home in St. Andrews East (now Saint André-d’Argenteuil), shared with her older sister, A lice. This exhibit case, arranged by Justine Valois, showcases her travel diary, open to her time in Istanbul; various invitations she received for international events (including one to the White House); notes from lectures she gave at other medical schools such as Harvard University; and records of exhibits she curated at the New York Academy of Medicine and the 1933 Century of Progress fair in Chicago.
The wall cases in the exhibition, arranged by Mayyasah Akour, highlight Abbott’s reading and writing. She read fiction throughout her life and recorded in her diary what she read and where. Her favourite novelist was John Buchan, who became Governor General of Canada in 1935. Abbott read books by feminist authors such as Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf (she read A Room of One’s Own only a few months after it was published in 1929). Her favourite novels appear in this part of the exhibition, as well as notes from her diaries on the books she was reading. The other wall case in the exhibition makes space for Abbott’s writing, including her professional contributions such as the Atlas of Congenital Heart Disease and one of the medical museum specimen logbooks. However, the emphasis in this part of the exhibition is on Abbott as a writer of other types of texts: diaries, poems, and student essays. Abbott recorded her daily life in “five-year diaries” where five years are featured on one single page for each day. The visitor can thus glimpse at a biographical arc in Abbott’s life at a glance. Several poems Abbott wrote and included in a Christmas card are on display for the first time.
Finally, four columns attend one side of the exhibit space, and each holds an artifact which encapsulates a theme: A leatherbound copy of Abbott’s bibliography of Osler’s with a tribute by her friend Dr. Emanuel Libman ; various qualification cards from institutions including the Montreal General Hospital and Bishop’s College; and Abbott’s handwritten autobiographical notes, on which most published accounts of her life are based. Inside the fourth column is Osler’s own copy of his textbook, open to the first page of Abbott’s contribution. Osler kept Abbott’s photo, almost like a bookmark, which imprinted itself onto the paper over the years. Much like this unexpected image, the exhibition is something of a palimpsest, with traces of Abbott’s life, emotions, and thoughts evident in the places she visited, the books she read and journals she penned. It is also a testament to Abbott’s multi-layered lives as a doctor, curator, traveller, writer, and reader.
The exhibit runs until mid-January. For more information please visit the McGill Library website.
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 edition of the Osler Library Newsletter and is reposted with kind permission of the Osler Library of the History of Medicine and Cigdem Talu. Photos by Mathilde Rodrigue and Mayyasah Akour.