Anderson Ruffin Abbott
First Black Canadian-born licensed physician
At a glance
- Inventor
- Anderson Ruffin Abbott
- Life
- 1837–1913
- Birthplace
- Toronto, Canada West
- Country
- Canada / United States
- Region
- Canada
- Era
- 1800s
- Fields
- Medicine & Health
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 0 in this archive
What they did
Abbott qualified through the Toronto School of Medicine and was licensed by the Medical Board of Upper Canada in 1861, then served as a civilian surgeon with the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Historical context
He worked at the Contraband Hospital in Washington, treating formerly enslaved people who had reached Union lines, and later ran hospitals in Canada and the United States.
The legacy
His papers, including his accounts of Lincoln's deathbed, are held in Toronto and remain a primary record of Black medical practice in nineteenth-century North America.
The evidence
Medical Board of Upper Canada licensing register, 1861
Primary recordAnderson Ruffin Abbott fonds
Institutional record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 1
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.