RARE FIRST EDITION. Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease de Abbott, Maude E - 1936

New York: American Heart Association, 1936. First edition.

1936 SCARCE LANDMARK ATLAS OF CONGENITAL HEART DISEASE BY CANADIAN PIONEER WHO ANALYZED POSTMORTEM ANATOMY OF 1,000 CASES.

27x35 cm folio, original maroon cloth boards, cover and spine gilt, hand stamp of Blanca Smith M.D., Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, on card affixed to ffep, bookseller ticket to bottom of front paste-down, small handstamp to title page from Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. Frontispiece portraits of great scientists who have contributed to congenital heart disease, i-x, 62 pp including 25 full-page plates and table of "Statistics of congenital cardiac disease (1,000 cases analyzed)." Edges rubbed, white paint streaks to back cover, hinges cracked but binding secure, text age-toned, very good minus in custom archival mylar cover.

MAUDE ELIZABETH SEYMOUR ABBOTT (1868–1940) was a Canadian physician, among Canada's earliest female medical graduates, and an internationally known expert on congenital heart disease. She was admitted to McGill University's Faculty of Arts, with a scholarship, even though she had previously been rejected, and received her BA in 1890, graduating as class valedictorian. She subsequently applied to study medicine at McGill University but admission was refused because women were not accepted. She was then accepted into medical school at Bishop's University and while there, was able to undertake clinical training at the Montreal General Hospital. In 1894, she received her M.D., C.M. with honors, the only woman in her class. She opened her own practice in Montreal, worked with the Royal Victoria hospital, and was elected as the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society's first female member. In 1897, she opened an independent clinic dedicated to treating women and children. There, she did original research in the pathology of congenital heart disease. In 1898, she was appointed Assistant Curator at the McGill Pathological Museum, becoming curator 1901. In 1905, she was invited to write the chapter on 'Congenital Heart Disease' for William Osler's System of Modern Medicine. He declared it "the best thing he had ever read on the subject." The article would place her as the world authority in the field of congenital heart disease. In 1936, she wrote the Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease (offered here). The work illustrated a new classification system and described records of over a thousand cases of clinical and postmortem records. The same year she retired from her professorial position. On 2 September 1940, Abbott died from a brain hemorrhage, in Montreal. In 1943, Diego Rivera painted her in his mural for the National Institute of Cardiology of Mexico City. She was the only Canadian, and the only woman depicted in the work. In 1994, she was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. In 2000, a bronze plaque was erected in her honor on the McIntyre Medical Building, and Canada Post issued a postage stamp entitled The Heart of the Matter. A reprint of the Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease (originally published in New York by the American Heart Association in 1936) was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2006 in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the International Academy of Pathology.

GARRISON-MORTON No. 2865 ABBOTT, Maude Elizabeth Seymour) (1869 – 1940). Atlas of congenital cardiac disease. New York: American Heart Association, 1936.

GARRISON-MORTON No. 11859. D F Bauer & E C Astbury. Congenital cardiac disease bibliography of the 1,000 cases analyzed in Maude Abbott's atlas: With an index. American Heart Journal Volume 27, Issue 5, May 1944, Pages 688-723 (PHOTOCOPY INCLUDED OF ENTIRE PAPER IN CLEAR BINDER).

PROVENANCE: BLANCA P. SMITH KENT, M.D., (1922-2008) earned her medical degree from Faculade Nacional de Medicina, Universidad de Brasil; Masters and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. She completed medical internships and residencies in Bolivia, Oregon, California, Ohio, Brazil, University of London, England and at Alder Hay Hospital in Liverpool, England. She was the personal dietician to the president of Bolivia prior to finishing medical school. She was a past Chief Surgical Resident at Columbus Children's Hospital, Director of Surgical Research at Columbus Children's Hospital and Associate Professor of Surgery at The Ohio State University.