The Heart Specialist ends with this afterword:
Although this novel takes its inspiration from the work and professional life of one of Montreal’s first female physicians, Dr. Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott (1869–1940), the characters and events imagined here are purely fictional.
And therein lies the challenge. What counts as “purely”? And how much impurity turns fantasy into…
Jacalyn Duffin
Jacalyn Duffin holds the Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine at Queen’s University. Her most recent book is Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2009).