The American Heart Association published Maude Abbott's Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease in 1936. The Atlas was an important contribution to the understanding of cardiac defects and helped provide the stimulus for rapid advances in the diagnostic, physiologic, and surgical aspects of congenital heart disease over the following decades. These advances have since progressed to such a degree that, given current radiologic imaging and surgical techniques, many of the anomalies illustrated in the Atlas are rarely seen as complete morphologic specimens. This reprinting of the Atlas underlines the importance of Abbott's contribution for the present generation.
This reprint includes a short history of Abbott's life and how she came to create the Atlas, including a discussion of the material she used for her 1934 London Exhibit, which served as the basis for the Atlas. The original text and illustrations are enhanced by color prints of fifty-five specimens in the Abbott Collection of the McGill Pathology Museum.
Re-publication of the Atlas in 2006 coincides with the 100th anniversary of the the International Academy of Pathology, which Abbott co-founded.
Maud Elizabeth Seymour Abbott (1869-1940) was a world-famous pathologist, the first woman appointed to the McGill Medical Faculty, and one of the first women to practice and teach medicine in Canada. She published more than 100 scientific articles and was editor of the Bulletin of the International Association of Medical Museums from 1908 to 1936.
Richard Fraser is professor of pathology, McGill University, and senior staff pathologist, McGill University Health Center. He is the co-author of Fraser and Pare's Diagnosis of Diseases of the Chest.
