Race and the Medical Museum: The Case of Maude Abbott

This paper showcases the 14 surviving acquisition logbooks from what is now called the Maude Abbott Medical Museum at McGill University, Montreal, as sources on the transnational acquisition and collection of Indigenous specimens in the early twentieth century. Between 1907 and 1938, curator Maude Abbott and colleagues accepted approximately 80-90 body parts as donations and trades, from institutions and individuals in Canada and the United States. These include teeth, eyes, ribs, pelvises, tibias, femurs, tibulas, ulnas, humeruses, and many skulls. The main institutional sources were the Army Medical Museum in Washington DC and the Ontario Provincial Museum in Toronto. Few of these specimens are extant. None has ever been studied.

Beyond acknowledging their existence, this paper dissects the logbook entries to uncover the role of race in the medical-museum acquisition process. It probes the individuals who sent the specimens to Abbott, the widely acclaimed cardiologist whose international networks I have explored elsewhere. These included at least two famous anthropologists and one physician, who collected material from sacred burial sites and Indian Residential Schools. The logbook entries allow us to see how Indigenous body parts were described and studied, compared to other groups, whether racialized or not.

A focus on acquisition shows how medical people traded body parts as if borders did not exist. Most importantly, by discussing specimens that have disappeared, we re-introduce them to the collection, granting them some historical presence.