The Past As It Ought to Be

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 history? After all, history—even good history—is fiction with footnotes.

So enshrouded in mystery is Abbott’s life that invention may be the best way to remember her: novels can throw open the past. Canadian examples of medico-historical fiction include Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, Matt Cohen’s The Spanish Doctor, Hugh MacLennan’s The Watch That Ends the Night and Ralph Connor’s The Doctor. A robust subgenre focuses on medical women. The cross-dressing British officer James...