At just the young age of 10, Abbott would skin the fish in jars of water and put the bones and cartilage together with fine wire and when he was only 15, he could sail 30 miles at night from Waquoit to Nantucket.

[3] The newly married Abbotts spent their honeymoon in an open dory sailing among Cape Cod's Elizabeth Islands.

With the fundamentals of a practical technique of intubation established, he began his investigations of the absorptive capacity of the gut and the effect of drugs on the intestine in December 1932.

On May 15, 1942, Abbott, a major in the United States Army Medical Corps, left Philadelphia with the 20th General Hospital for Camp Claiborne, Louisiana.

Eight days later while undergoing a physical examination a large spleen was detected and blood studies led to a diagnosis of Myelogenous leukemia.

[5] Still largely unchanged in 2011, once this instrument weaves down the esophagus and into the stomach, the tube is capable of a handful of jobs at this point, from suctioning gastric juices for testing and irrigation to ballooning open the entryway to the small intestine, called the duodenum, for clearer radiology testing and easier removal of many intestinal blockages.

These doctors also pioneered the surgical procedures that set the stage for easier diagnosis and removal of stomach and intestinal lesions, blockages and ulcers.

[6] With the instrument having its double-barreled design, one of the pipes, called a lumen, is responsible for pumping up a thin balloon at the tip for easy exploration into the intestines at the duodenum.

Allowing the tube to proceed into the intestines also might help dislodge identified blockages causing pain or digestive disorders.

It can also help the doctor know exactly when the Miller-Abbott tube's balloon is at the perfect location in the duodenum — a process that depends on the slow and steady peristaltic contractions of the digestive tract.

Miller published on many areas of medicine, but concentrated mainly on gastroenterology and in 1934 commenced a series of papers with William Osler Abbott and W. G. Carr on intubation and studies of the small intestine which became classics and were made possible by the invention of the double lumen tube.

[3] A small 5 series collection about William Osler Abbott was assembled by Catharine G. Leeke, his secretary at the Gastro Intestinal Clinic at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

On June 7, 1972, the collection was donated by Thomas A. Urbine, Jr. on behalf of Catharine Leeke to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and then transferred to the College of Physicians.