Over the years, Maude Abbott collected many specimens illustrating cardiovascular anomalies for the Medical Museum. In 1932, she sent a series of diagrams, photographs and drawings of pathologic specimens and clinical material associated with her collection, as well as some of the corresponding “wet” museum specimens, as an exhibit to the Centenary Meeting of the British Medical Association in London, England. The graphic material was pasted on a series of millboard posters which, when arranged for display, occupied a wall space measuring approximately four feet high by thirty two feet long. Below the posters on two tiers of shelving were approximately 50 anatomical specimens.
Centenary Meeting of the British Medical Association in London, England. 1932
Following Abbott’s return from London, Dr. David Seecof of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal suggested that the exhibit could form the basis for an Atlas, an idea with which Abbott quickly agreed. The material from the posters was thus dissembled and re-organized with additional cases to form a series of 25 Plates. The Atlas was first published by the American Heart Association in 1936 and re-issued in 1956.
2006 publication of Atlas. Remastered color images of Plate XX.
A third printing in 2006, which includes remastered color images of many of the specimens used by Abbott in the preparation of the Atlas, was undertaken as a memorial for the 100th Anniversary meeting of the International Academy of Pathology. Copies are available at McGill Queens University Press.
Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease
Links
Preserving the “art” in Heart. Osler Library History of Medicine Blog
