[3] 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.

[2][3][4] 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.

[3] She studied the pathology of diseases affecting the optic nerve, spleen, brain, and spinal cord, and she examined cases of sudden death, multiple sclerosis, and microscopic hemorrhage.

[3] By prior agreement, she performed the autopsy on Frank Bunker Gilbreth, identifying the arteriosclerosis that had caused his death.

[2] She is most famous for a paper she co-wrote in 1931 discussing the case of a child who had died at sixteen months and whose brain had a spongy white section.