Dr. Canavan studied the pathology of diseases affecting the optic nerve, the spleen, the brain, and the spinal cord, and examined cases of sudden death, multiple sclerosis, and of microscopic hemorrhage. She always sought to discover the pathological basis of different diseases and bodily defects, and defects of the brain were of special interest to her. Her most famous accomplishment came in 1931 when she published a paper she had co-written with a colleague that described the condition now known as "Canavan's Disease." The paper discussed the case of a young child who had died at only sixteen months of age, and whose brain had a soft, spongy section that had turned white. Canavan was the first to diagnose the disease pattern for this degenerative
