Myrtelle Canavan

Myrtelle Canavan
Myrtelle M. Canavan and Elmer Ernest Southard
Born	June 24, 1879 Greenbush Township, Clinton County, Michigan, United States
Died	August 4, 1953 (Aged 74) Boston, Massachusetts
Citizenship	United States
Fields	Medicine
Alma mater	Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania
Known for	First published description of Canavan disease

Myrtelle May Moore Canavan (June 24, 1879 – August 4, 1953) was an American physician and medical researcher. She was one of the first female pathologists and is best known for publishing a description of Canavan disease in 1931.

Born in Greenbush Township, near St. Johns, Michigan, Canavan studied at (Michigan) State Agricultural College (now Michigan State University), the University of Michigan Medical School, and Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, from which she received her M.D. in 1905.

In 1905 she married Dr. James F. Canavan.

In 1907 she was appointed assistant bacteriologist at Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, where she met Elmer Ernest Southard, Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School, who encouraged her interest in neuropathology. In 1910 she became resident pathologist at Boston State Hospital and in 1914 was appointed pathologist to the Massachusetts Department of Mental Diseases. She was also an instructor of neuropathology at the University of Vermont.

After Southard's death in 1920, Canavan became acting director of the laboratories of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, which would later become the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. From 1920 until her retirement in 1945, she was an associate professor of neuropathology at Boston University and curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard Medical School, where she added more than 1,500 specimens and also improved record-keeping and discarded damaged specimens. However, her official title was "assistant curator" because of objections to a woman heading the museum, and she was never appointed to the Harvard faculty.