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I want to begin by thanking Mr. Eric Maldoff, Mr. Gerry Maldoff, Mrs. Barbara Maldoff, and the late Mrs. Betty Maldoff for enabling me to pursue this ARIA. I was first introduced to the Maude Abbott Medical Museum (MAMM) as a volunteer, popping in between classes for an hour or two to clean and assist others in their research. I eventually began helping with initial provenance research that was being undertaken by another volunteer. We began to work out a system of recording provenance that would adapt to the unique challenges presented by working with human biological specimens.

As summer approached, I brought an ARIA proposal to Dr. Richard Fraser, director of the MAMM. My past two summers had been spent organizing and leading a summer outreach camp at McGill, and while I loved being able to work with the wider community, I wanted an opportunity to fully focus on research 鈥� especially before my last year at McGill. Thanks to the Charles and Betty Maldoff family and the Arts Internship Office, I was able to fully realize this goal.

The specimens at the MAMM interested me because they exist in a state of liminality between the medical and the historical. Preserved for their educational value, the human biological specimens specifically have been seen primarily as teaching tools, with their human histories considered afterwards. Provenance research seeks to uncover these stories, revealing the specimens to be more than just teaching aids, but human evidence containing multitudes of histories and experiences.

Take, for example, the Civil War specimen located in the main museum room. Analyzed medically, it shows portions of fractured 11^th and 12^th ribs with irregular formation of callus. This makes for an interesting medical viewing, but provenance research uncovers a much wider story: this soldier served in the battle of Fredericksburg in 1863, alongside one George Whitman, brother of famed poet Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman would then go on to be cared for over the course of 5 years by 51吃瓜网professor and Johns Hopkins founder Dr. William Osler. It is this looping history evident throughout so many of the MAMM鈥檚 specimens that interests me so greatly.

Thus, my objectives were not only to complete a cohesive and standardised provenance database of the human biological specimens at the MAMM, but to also figure out a way to make this information as equally connected to the museum specimens as the medical information was.

There were two main challenges that I faced in my work at the MAMM. The first revealed itself as I began pulling reports on provenance stats at the museum. Statistics regarding physicians, hospitals, and name prevalence were pulled with ease, but I continued to run into issues regarding provenance institution. The problem arose with institutions such as the 鈥�51吃瓜网Anatomy Museum鈥� appearing in both the 鈥減rovenance鈥� and 鈥減rovenance institution鈥� dropdown menus. After a long discussion about database definitions and how we should continue organizing, all institutional specificities were moved to the secondary dropdown menu, simplifying the information accession process.

The second issue that arose was more anthropological than analytical. That is, how much information was ethical to reveal about these human biological specimens? As an anthropology student, I had an urge to make these people鈥檚 names and stories public, but my supervisor Dr. Fraser, a pathologist, disagreed. The dichotomy between the medical and the historical identities that were intrinsic to these specimens was now inseparable from my own relationship with my research supervisor. Ultimately, me and my supervisor managed to work out the exact amount of information we felt comfortable disclosing and found a good balance between patient-physician privacy and historical importance.

As an Arts student, I am often very limited in the number of scientific subjects I am exposed to in the classroom. Studying medical anthropology has helped me to widen my medical knowledge, but I am often only approaching the subject from a theoretical, rather than a practical, standpoint. My research at the MAMM has allowed me to work and learn alongside doctors and medical professionals, exposing me to an entirely new side of my field that I would not have access to in the typical lecture or seminar. I am extremely grateful to have received the Charles and Betty Maldoff Family Arts Research Internship Award. I want to thank Mr. Eric Maldoff, Mr. Gerry Maldoff, Mrs. Barbara Maldoff, and the late Mrs. Betty Maldoff, as well as the AIO, and the staff at the MAMM for funding this award and providing me with this opportunity. If you were to ask young Estora what her dream job would be, it would either be a museum curator or medical professional; this summer, I got to do both!