Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott (March 18, 1869 – September 2, 1940) was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 doctor and was one of Canada's earliest female medical graduates and an expert on congenital heart disease.

Born in St. Andrews East, Quebec as Maude Elizabeth Seymour Babin, she was raised by her maternal grandmother, Mrs. William Abbott, who enventually legally adopted her along with her older sister Alice. She was a cousin of John Abbott

John Abbott

Sir John Joseph Caldwell Abbott, PC, KCMG, QC was the third Prime Minister of Canada. He served in the office for seventeen months, from June 16, 1891 to November 24, 1892. - Life and work :...

, Canada's third Prime Minister. She was part of the third class of women students admitted to McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

's Faculty of Arts. She received her B.A in 1890 along with two other notable women; Elizabeth Binmore

Elizabeth Binmore

Elizabeth Binmore was an educationist from Montreal whose notability comes from her career and her important personal firsts in education....

 and Carrie Matilda Derick. She received her M.D from Bishop's University

Bishop's University

Bishop's University is a predominantly undergraduate university in Lennoxville, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. Bishop's is one of three universities in the province of Quebec that teach primarily in the English language...

 in 1894 and was the only woman in her class. She did post graduate study in medicine at Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 and Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

. Returning to Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 she was appointed assistant curator at the McGill Pathological Museum in 1899, becoming curator 1901.

She was awarded an honorary medical degree in 1910 from McGill and was made a Lecturer in Pathology. She became an Assistant Professor in 1925.

She helped to found the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, a Canadian organization committed to the professional, social and personal advancement of women physicians, in 1924.

She was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame

Canadian Medical Hall of Fame

The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame is a Canadian charitable organization, founded in 1994, that honours Canadians who have contributed to the understanding of disease and improving the health of people. It has a museum in London, Ontario, and has an annual induction ceremony.-2012:*Terry Fox*John...

 in 1994. In 2000 Canada Post

Canada Post

Canada Post Corporation, known more simply as Canada Post , is the Canadian crown corporation which functions as the country's primary postal operator...

 issued a forty-six cent postage stamp entitled The Heart of the Matter in her honour.

She wrote over 140 papers and books. Some of them include:

• The Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease
• Pigmentation-cirrhosis in a case of Haemochromatosis
• An Historical Sketch of the Medical Faculty of McGill University
• On the Classification of Museum Specimens-American Medicine
• The Museum in Medical Teaching
• Congenital Cardiac Disease, Chapter IX in Osler's Modern Medicine
• The Determination of Basal Metabolism by Indirect Calorimetry
• Florence Nightingale as seen in her portraits
• McGill's Heroic Past
• On the differentiation of two forms of congenital dextrocardia

External links

• Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott at The Canadian Encyclopedia
  The Canadian Encyclopedia
  The Canadian Encyclopedia is a source of information on Canada. It is available online, at no cost. The Canadian Encyclopedia is available in both English and French and includes some 14,000 articles in each language on a wide variety of subjects including history, popular culture, events, people,...