Maude Abbott Medical Museum
The Maude Abbott Medical Museum (also known as French: Musée Médical Maude Abbott in French) is a special museum about medical science. It is located at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The museum is named after a famous Canadian doctor named Maude Abbott. She helped manage the museum as its curator in the late 1800s.
Contents
Discovering the Museum's Past
The Maude Abbott Medical Museum started with collections owned by university professors. These collections held "interesting specimens," which are like samples or examples used for study. In the late 1800s, the museum had many different items.
Early Collections and Donors
The early collection included items from dissection rooms, which are places where bodies are studied. These came from F.J. Shepherd's collection. There were also skeletons, bones, and models made from materials like papier-mâché, wax, and plaster.
A very important doctor named William Osler gave almost 500 specimens to the museum. These were "post-mortem" specimens, meaning they came from studies done after death. These items came from the Université de Montréal Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and the Montreal General Hospital. Another person who helped build the collection was Wyatt Johnson.
Maude Abbott's Important Role
At first, a junior faculty member looked after the museum. By 1894, the museum was housed in two rooms within the medical building. In 1898, Maude Abbott became the assistant curator. A curator is like a manager who organizes and cares for a museum's collection.
Maude Abbott did an amazing job organizing everything. She created a special catalogue system to keep track of all the specimens. Because of her hard work, she was named the full curator in 1899.
Exploring the Museum's Collections
The Maude Abbott Medical Museum has different collections that show important medical discoveries.
The Osler Collection
The Osler collection once had 180 specimens by 1899. These were items donated by Dr. William Osler. By 1935, about 130 of these original specimens were still part of the collection.
The Abbott Collection
The Maude Abbott collection is very special. It includes specimens from both animals and humans. These specimens show "cardiovascular anomalies." This means they are examples of problems or unusual conditions related to the heart and blood vessels.
