Today is the 142nd birthday of an amazing Canadian researcher and physician– Dr. Maude Abbott. It’s hard to sum up in a few words just how awesome this lady was. Briefly, she was orphaned as a child and was raised by her grandmother. After graduating high school, she joined one of the first groups of women to enroll and graduate from McGill. Although she was tremendously interested in pursuing medicine, she was not admitted to the McGill medical school which at the time was exclusive to men. So instead, she enrolled in Bishop’s where women were admitted, and later pursued her postgraduate studies in Europe.

When Abbott returned to Montreal, as I outline below, she was able to establish herself as an expert in congenital heart disease. For her work she was awarded an honourary medical degree from McGill and became a professor at the very institution that had some three decades earlier refused to consider her application on the basis of her gender. Being a woman researcher and physician, Abbott faced many challenges in a world where science and medicine were considered to be men’s territory. However, she overcame many of these barriers by the excellence in the quality of her work and her strong character, consequently paving the way for many more women to succeed.

The following is not an autobiographical sketch, but rather looks at a particular artifact of medicine that I had the pleasure of seeing at the McGill Medical Museum earlier this year and how it shaped Maude Abbott’s career.

The Holmes Heart
Rise of Pathological Anatomy in Canada

By Marzieh Ghiasi (Mar 2011)

athological anatomy, the study of altered or abnormal anatomy, is a field that in its early stages relied heavily on the collection and study of specimens. The ‘Holmes Heart’ is one of such specimens. Stored today at the McGill Medical Museum, it gave early modern physicians an understanding of the human body and its pathologies.
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While researching the works of Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield I found a rather moving tribute by him to William Osler, aptly titled “Hero Worship”. By moving tribute, I mean fangirling over an extraordinary physician, writer, etc. which leads me to wonder if Dr. Penfield were alive, would he want my Sir William Osler: A ‘Stach Through History desktop wallpaper? Sadly this delightful article is not under public domain but can be found in the Archives of Internal Medicine for those who have institutional access.

Sir William Osler devoted his mind to medical education, to the study of clinical problems and to the lore of medical history. In all those fields he was a distinguished leader, and yet it is not altogether because of these qualities of the intellect that Osler Societies have sprung up in so many parts of the English-speaking world, chiefly composed of students or of young physicians. The unique quality of this man had to do with the “heart.”

I would have you see him, through the eyes of the previously quoted undergraduate, as “the least sentimental, the most helpful, most lovable,” teacher of medicine. He belongs to medical students of all time, as Lincoln belongs to common men everywhere, a man who grew to be what he was by dint of hard work, and in whose footsteps any under-graduate may dare to “hope and dream” that he may follow.

Penfield, W. (1949). “Hero Worship.” Archives of Internal Medicine 84(1): 104-109.

Today I had the chance to visit Musée des Hospitalières de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal located on Avenue des Pins Ouest between Avenue du Parc and Rue Saint-Urbain. I’d passed by the complex many times in the past couple of years since I lived right around the corner, but I’d never actually visited the museum.

Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal (Source)

“Hôtel-dieu” means “hostel of God” and is an old term in French for hospitals. The term refers to the origin and history of French hospitals as religious institutions and Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal is no different. It is the oldest hospital in Montreal, founded in 1642 by Jeanne Mance. There is actually a street called Rue Jeanne-Mance and I’d always assumed it bore the name of one of Catholic saints, as many streets in Montreal do. So it was news for me to find out (1) Jeanne Mance was a lady (2) and wasn’t a religious figure.

Jeanne Mance, founder of
Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal
*Click image for full view
(source)

Jeanne Mance was a laywoman born to a bourgeois family in France. When she came to New France, with an endowment from a French benefactress Angélique Bullion, she founded Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal. The hospital was staffed by nuns from the order of Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph (RHSJ) which had been founded six years prior.

Today part of the old hospital has been converted to a museum that sits in two parts. The first floor is the entrance, the second contains artifacts and documents describing the founding of the hospital and the nuns’ convent, and the third displays artifacts from the hospital.

I found the second floor particularly interesting because I had a chance to speak with a guide, a kind old lady who described for me in detail the nuns’ lives from the 1600s onward. It was obvious that the nuns in the convent led solitary and cloistered lives and one might wonder, as I did, what the appeal would be. As my guide recounted, young women were compelled to join the order for many different reasons, but there existed some common narratives in their experiences. Up to mid-19th century, families in New France were encouraged to have large families in order to keep the settlements going strong. Many women who joined the religious orders came from large families where they were the first children, and were expected to be responsible for many younger children. Understandably, after the experience, some young women found life as laywoman unappealing.

Large families also meant that many families were very poor and could not afford an education for the children. For young women, joining the order meant receiving support from a spiritual family and an education. In spirit of sisterhood, nuns would teach each other to write, work with numbers, and skills that would be more difficult for laywomen to acquire. One of the documents in the museum described a 13-year old who had joined the order and had later gone on to become a very successful mother superior. While it might seem unreasonable that a 13-year old could understand or be capable of making such a decision, the chances of a young woman being able to accomplish much outside this context were very small. Also at that time, women were considered to be subjugated to their husbands and devoid of their own identity and person-hood after they married. The nuns, however, were able to retain authority within society and commanded respect for their accomplishments. So while the nuns may have been cloistered from society, in some ways they were much more present and able to contribute to society than laywomen.

Not all nuns were in convents, however, and some orders were actually completely immersed in society. There were orders to help the blind, to help orphans, to help those with leprosy and in general help the needy when no one else was. In Montreal, the convent and the hospital were separate. However, as my guide described the nuns at Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal lived a kind of a double life reflective of their motto “silence and charity”. In the convent they dealt with religious duties, while in the hospital they worked as nurses, tending to the needs of the sick and helping their families cope.

Hôtel-Dieu infirmary (Source)

The medical artifacts on the third floor are quite interesting and make up a large part of the 20,000 artifacts that the museum has preserved. These included instruments such as early microscopes (with intact slides!), glass syringes, wooden wheelchairs, and pictures of the hospital. Aside from the historical medical equiptment, I enjoyed looking at pictures of the nurses, noticing their transformation through the years. Up to 1935 the nurses in Hôtel-Dieu wore head-covering similar to coifs. Apparently, the coif with an extended veil in the back sometimes got in the way so they changed their nuns’ coifs to nursing caps. For most of Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal’s history only nuns were allowed to be nurses in the infirmary; however, after 1901 they began to train laynurses. These young women would train and work at the hospital alongside the nuns and stay with the nuns for a small fee.

In 1970s, following Quebec’s Révolution tranquille (Quiet Revolution), all the hospitals in Quebec were transferred to the government to be run by the secular apparatus. Therefore, while the Hôtel-Dieu hospital exists as a teaching hospital for Université de Montréal, the nurses are no longer associated with any religious orders. What remains of Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal’s 300-year history is the museum and the nuns who live in another part of the complex. Today they run an affordable hostel for families of patients in CHUM/MUHC hospitals who need to stay in the city to accompany their sick family member. The nuns no longer live in a convent, separate from society, and they no longer wear habits but normal clothes. They can only be identified by the pins they wear as part of the order Sisters of St. Joseph (RSJ).

I saw a story on an interesting new paper review published in the December edition of Current Anthropology. The paper is entitled New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis (doi:10.1086/657397) by University of Birmingham researcher Jeffrey Rose.

Epic of Gilgamesh – Image Source

The basis of this paper is ‘The Oasis Theory’ put forward by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, and later popularized by Vere Gordon Childe in his 1928 book “The Most Ancient Near-East”. The theory holds that climate was at the heart of the Neolithic Revolution, and that first agricultural and domestication efforts by humans took place as a drying climate led them to form communities around oases in close association with animals. Paleoclimatic data and archeological evidence have provided data to leading credence this idea.

Inverse to the amount of annual precipitation falling across the interior, reduced sea levels periodically exposed large portions of the Arabo-Persian Gulf, equal at times to the size of Great Britain. Therefore, when the hinterlands were desiccated, populations could have contracted into the Gulf Oasis to exploit its freshwater springs and rivers. [source]

Rose’s review is significant in that it forms a theoretical framework based on archeological, genetic and paleoclimatic data to assert that human populations have existed in the Gulf for the past 100,000 years– and that the area was populated in the first wave of human expansion out of Africa.

In order to investigate the likelihood of an indigenous community within the Gulf Oasis, paleoenvironmental and archaeological evidence are synthesized, working to build a picture of prehistoric occupation over the course of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene… This evidence is used to construct a model of human occupation around the basin over the course of the last 100,000 years. The final section discusses the implications of the Gulf Oasis on current scenarios of modern human expansion out of Africa as well as the Neolithic demographic transition in southwest Asia. [source]

This theory accounts for both earlier migrations out of the gulf and for the sudden expansion of well-developed settlements that occurred around 8,000 years ago around the Gulf region.

The Gulf Oasis would have been a shallow inland basin exposed from about 75,000 years ago until 8,000 years ago… “Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago,” Rose said. “These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean. [source]

The expansion to Australia is thought to have been one of the earlier human migrations and that is placed around 50 thousand years ago. So the possibility that modern humans were in the Persian Gulf 100 thousand years ago is quite significant, specially when compounded with another study earlier showing that non-Africans populations possess 1-4% Neanderthal genetic material, and that the “hybridization” probably took place in the Middle East.

Another aspect, which is amusing to think about, is what this all means with relation to the Garden of Eden and the Great Deluge mythos that has prevailed in the region since the first written records. Every year somebody comes out with a new location which they swear is the Garden of Eden– and it still doesn’t get old.

Albeit epiphenomenal, it is interesting to note that the oldest known version of the ubiquitous Near Eastern flood myth, the “Eridu genesis”… was written by the inhabitants of this region.

While the paper has been lauded by all of the commentators and appears to be strong, some commentators have criticized the article for essentially jumping the gun without strong archaeological evidence from the Gulf itself.

I am skeptical about the relevance of mythology and equally so about reliance on genetic proxy data, given the huge margins of error in coalescence dates and the many other assumptions involved… Genetic inference has a role to play but, as Rose demonstrates here, the archaeological data are key to forming and testing new hypotheses. Moreover, many other shallow shelf regions would have had similar potentials at lowered sea level, so this is an issue of worldwide interest and not unique to the Persian Gulf. [source]

On a final note, I was relieved to see this particular comment from an archaeologist, Juris Zarins, who has some done fantastic work in the Arabian Peninsula (and whom I’d heard about before in the context of ‘Garden of Eden’ theories).

“The terms “Arabo-Persian Gulf” or “Gulf” cannot be scientifically applied to the studied region, which has been called “Persian Gulf” for the last two millennia. This name is also the only accepted term in United Nations documents. Although due to some political reasons some of the neighboring countries to this region have been trying to apply some other terminologies to the mentioned geographical zone, it is vital that in archaeological texts the researchers stand neutral in political debates and use the geographical names based on the UN official documents.”

Rose, J. (2010). New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis Current Anthropology, 51 (6), 849-883 DOI: 10.1086/657397

 

Side note: I really love the dialogue that goes in the commentary of many anthropological papers I’ve read as a part of my minor. It’s quite different from science papers I’m used to where people don’t openly question the methods and assertions of peer-reviewed papers (unless the paper is really bad) and don’t start a dialogue, instead opting to publish their own scientific papers disapproving or verifying the findings. I recognize that it’s important to confirm or reject data with other data, but at the same time, more scientific “dialogue” and placing researchers on the hot plate at the time of publication may (1) lead to the right questions being asked and answered (2) improve the quality of research in the future.

« Back to part 1 | Speaking of revolutionary thinking, today, April 25^th is also the anniversary of Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution, which took place five years before the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The Carnation Revolution was a single day culmination of a long struggle, but was notable in that in its last stages the revolutionary soldiers and people did not use direct violence, but came together peacefully to overthrow and transform the Portuguese government from a dictatorship to a relatively successful democracy. It has been said that “the population, holding red carnations, convinced the regime soldiers not to resist. The soldiers readily swapped their bullets for flowers.”

Image source.

I’d like to read about Portuguese history and the coming of the Carnation Revolution this summer, but as it is said a picture can speak a thousand words– and some pictures of the carnations in the gun barrels in various blogs today remind me not of pages from a history book, but the people I saw last summer in the streets of Tehran. In particular, they reminded me images I witnessed with my own eyes and recorded on July 17^th, 2009. Here’s a brief excerpt from my notes:

The past few days people across the country have been anticipating the Friday prayers this week. One of the former presidents, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is scheduled to give the Friday sermon. [...] Some commentators have been calling it a potential turning point, «روز مبادا», while others are more hesitant. We’ll see, I suppose. [...] Passing through Northern Tehran, I’ve seen so many who have donned black chadors, which is a rather peculiar sight here. But people are waiting for buses, I guess everyone is going to the same place. [...] The streets are packed with cars starting near Tarbiat Modares University, in fact I am guessing the 3-5km radius around Enghelab square is fully packed [...] Passing through Dr. Fatemi street, the concentration of police has increased significantly [...]

[...] A police-man just seriously beat some poor guy, likely a storekeeper, sitting on the steps of his store to watch the people passing by. Horrifying. [...] I just saw a young soldier in a green uniform walking in the grassy area in middle of the avenue, against the current of people, with a carnation in his hand. He was holding it was as if it was a fragile thing, looking at it, dazed, smiling. I wonder who gave it to him.
Perhaps there is hope yet.

November 24th, 2009 marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The book, along with Marx’s The Communist Manifesto is the most important work of the 19th century. Like the other, Origin challenged both the scientific establishment and the social establishment, and as a result, generated a lot of controversy, which it continues to do so to this day.

Origin of Species must also be considered one of the most influential books of all time. I can’t think of any work that has so rapidly and in a such a way shifted the prevailing paradigm and changed humankind’s perception of the world and itself– so it’s no surprise that the book is said to have brought about a revolution in science, much like Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. Unlike Copernicus, however, Darwin himself foresaw this and wrote in the last pages of Origin:

When the views advanced by me in this volume, and by Mr. Wallace, or when analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can dimly forsee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history. -Chapter XV, On the Origin of Species

In the words that follow, I explore the origins of Origin and pose that the revolution in fact started a year and some months earlier with the publication of the Linnean papers. I also examine the brilliant naturalist and elusive figure, “Mr. Wallace”, and his role in putting forward evolutionary theory.

The Linnean Papers
Darwin, Wallace & A Nascent Revolution

By Marzieh Ghiasi (Nov 2009)

n July 1st, 1858, in a special meeting of the Linnean Society, held in London, two brief papers describing natural selection as a mechanism of evolution were read. The Linnean papers, published later in August 20th as part of the society’s proceedings, were the start of a movement in science that became known as the Darwinian revolution. One essay was by Charles Darwin, an English naturalist whose name has become the cornerstone of evolutionary theory. The other essay was by Alfred Russel Wallace, an English naturalist whose name has become largely restricted to the annals of history. The traditional approach has been to set Darwin and Wallace as rivals in a fight for priority of publication, one which the majority of literature has argued Darwin won. The Linnean papers, however, can be examined as an outcome of a cooperative trajectory in which a common theory of evolution was developed by two vastly different individuals. This paper focuses on the association between Darwin and Wallace with respect to the Linnean papers, arguing that the interactions of the two naturalists offered them mutual benefits that would have been unlikely otherwise. As well, the interactions between the two men created a cohesion and unity critical in a field at its nascent stages.

Two Men Worlds Apart

Victorian Britain was highly class-conscious and its science was viewed as a domain of the upper class. Charles Darwin, born in 1809 into a prestigious and wealthy English family and educated in the University of Edinburgh and University of Cambridge, was an ideal representative of these values. Alfred Russel Wallace, conversely, was born in 1823 to a low income family and class relations played a tremendous role throughout his life.^[1] Although his father was a lawyer, he never practiced and the family had to learn to rely on self-sufficiency. Wallace never received formal schooling beyond the age of thirteen, when he was withdrawn and sent to an apprenticeship because his family no longer could pay for his education. By the time he was fourteen, he joined his brother as an apprentice land surveyor. However, Wallace was precocious and determined, and began to teach himself many subjects including taxonomy for which he had grown a great affinity.^[2] Unlike Darwin, who was well positioned for a life in pursuit of science, Wallace’s challenge was to break through rigid social barriers and prove himself as a scientist.

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I read this magnificent piece a couple of weeks ago and it left me with a lot to digest, and so I wanted to share it. In a world where scientific theories like evolution still have not found widespread acceptance in the public, it seems that many are still unwilling to face, what Bacon calls in Sphynx or Science, questions on the nature of things and the nature of man. After reading this passage, I was left with a truly deep appreciation for the curiosity of every child, and for every woman and man who has ever dared approach the sphinxes that guard the incognito, and face the riddles of the universe and our humanity.

“Sphynx or Science”
Sir Francis Bacon’s The Wisdom of the Ancients (1619)

phinx, says the story, was a monster combining many shapes in one. She had the face and voice of a virgin, the wings of a bird, the claws of a griffin. She dwelt on the ridge of a mountain near Thebes and infested the roads, lying in ambush for travelers, whom she would suddenly attack and lay hold of; and when she had mastered them, she propounded to them certain dark and perplexing riddles, which she was thought to have obtained from the Muses. And if the wretched captives could not at once solve and interpret the same, as they stood hesitating and confused she cruelly tore them to pieces. Time bringing no abatement of the calamity, the Thebans offered to any man who should expound the Sphinx’s riddles ( for this was the only way to subdue her ) the sovereignty of Thebes as his reward.

*Image Source

The greatness of the prize induced Œdipus, a man of wisdom and penetration, but lame from wounds in his feet, to accept the condition and make the trial: who presenting himself full of confidence and alacrity before the Sphinx, and being asked what kind of animal it was which was born four-footed, afterwards became two-footed, then three-footed, and at last four-footed again, answered readily that it was man; who at his birth and during his infancy sprawls on all fours, hardly attempting to creep; in a little while walks upright on two feet; in later years leans on a walking stick and so goes as it were on three; and at last in extreme age and decrepitude, his sinews all failing, sinks into a quadruped again, and keeps his bed. This was the right answer and gave him victory; whereupon he slew the Sphinx; whose body was put on the back of an ass and carried about in triumph; while himself was made according to compact King of Thebes.

The fable is an elegant and a wise one, invented apparently in allusion to Science; especially in its application to practical life. Science, being the wonder of the ignorant and unskillful, may be not absurdly called a monster. In figure and aspect it is represented as many-shaped, in allusion to the immense variety of matter with which it deals. It is said to have the face and voice of a woman, in respect of its beauty and facility of utterance. Wings are added because the sciences and the discoveries of science spread and fly abroad in an instant; the communication of knowledge being like that of one candle with another, which lights up at once.
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This story is just precious.

How it Happened
Isaac Asimov

My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one which has the tribes hanging on his words.

“In the beginning,” he said, “exactly fifteen point two billion years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe–”

But I had stopped writing. “Fifteen billion years ago?” I said incredulously.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m inspired.”

“I don’t question your inspiration,” I said. (I had better not. He’s three years younger than I am, but I don’t try questioning his inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there’s hell to pay.) “But are you going to tell the story of the Creation over a period of fifteen billion years?”

“I have to,” said my brother. “That’s how long it took. I have it all in here,” he tapped his forehead, “and it’s on the very highest authority.”

By now I had put down my stylus. “Do you know the price of papyrus?” I said.

“What?” (He may be inspired but I frequently noticed that the inspiration didn’t include such sordid matters as the price of papyrus.)

I said, “Suppose you describe one million years of events to each roll of papyrus. That means you’ll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls. You’ll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to stammer after a while. I’ll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the voice and I have the strength, who’s going to copy it? We’ve got to have a guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where will we get royalties from?”

My brother thought awhile. He said, “You think I ought to cut it down?”

“Way down,” I said, “if you expect to reach the public.”

“How about a hundred years?” he said.

“How about six days?” I said.

He said horrified, “You can’t squeeze Creation into six days.”

I said, “This is all the papyrus I have. What do you think?”

“Oh, well,” he said, and began to dictate again, “In the beginning– Does it have to be six days, Aaron?”

I said, firmly, “Six days, Moses.”

-Source