Friendship archaeology: how Maude Abbott occupied overlapping spaces of excellence

Abstract

This paper is drawn from a chapter of a forthcoming book on Canadian physician Maude Abbott. The excerpt explores how a prominent woman negotiated relationships during the early twentieth century. Abbott spent most of her career at McGill University in Montreal, as curator of its medical museum and as a researcher in congenital heart disease. Nonetheless her network of correspondents was vast. Engaging an approach the author calls ‘friendship archaeology’, the paper excavates Abbott's relationship with two powerful American physicians, Emanuel Libman and Paul Dudley White. Archival evidence turns up links with Nobel Prize nominees and winners, revealing how Abbott manoeuvred in that network.