Duff Medical Building
3775 University Street
Montreal Quebec
H3A 2B4
As part of Principal Arthur Currie's campaign to modernize McGill's facilities, the Pathological Institute was built in 1923. The new building, located at the corner of Pine Street and University Street, beside the Royal Victoria Hospital, included ample space for a museum and various laboratories and workrooms used to maintain it. The management of this museum, including the accessioning and preparation of specimens and their use in teaching, was taken over by the Pathology Department Chairman, leaving Abbott essentially isolated in the Strathcona Building as Curator of the newly named “Central” Medical Museum.
Many of the pathological specimens in Abbott’s Museum were moved to the new Pathological Institute in 1924 and in 1925 Abbott's technician, E.L. Judah, with whom she had worked since 1896, was named Curator of Museums.
Specimens continued to be accessioned, preserved and mounted in the Pathological Institute Museum workshop until 1972 and were still available on loan for clinicians to “illustrate” lectures into the 1960s. The Pathology Museum was converted into a research laboratory in 1965 and student teaching was moved to a series of cubicles, with a selection of specimens located on wall racks and organized according to organ system. These remained until 1996 when the specimens were removed to storage in the now unused museum workshop.