Tour Description
Join Boston By Foot and Susan Wilson to explore the trailblazing life of Susan Dimock, M.D. To her contemporaries in Boston of the 1870s, Susan Dimock was well known as a strong, selfless innovator in American medicine—one of the first group of female physicians to provide the unique professional health care needed by women, and one of the most respected and beloved surgeons in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Born and raised in the slaveholding South, she escaped from the ravages of Civil War, fled North during wartime, intersected with the Underground Railroad, connected with Dr. Marie Zakrzewska at the innovative New England Hospital for Women and Children, studied medicine in Zurich and Vienna, and returned to Boston where she ran the women’s hospital, executed complex surgeries, and molded America’s first real training school for nurses. Dr. Dimock is the namesake of Roxbury's Dimock Street and Dimock Center.
Bio:
Susan Wilson is a professional photographer, writer, and public historian. She is the official House Historian of the Omni Parker House in Boston, an Affiliate Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, and an Honorary Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. After receiving a B.A. and M.A. in history from Tufts University, Susan taught history at both the secondary school and college levels before moving into a career in journalism and photojournalism. Her writing and photography regularly appeared in the Boston Globe between 1978 and 1996. Since 1994 she has been writing books on Boston history, including Heaven, By Hotel Standards: The History of the Omni Parker House; Boston Sites and Insights; The Literary Trail of Greater Boston; and Garden of Memories: A Guide to Historic Forest Hills. Her brand-new book, Women and Children First: The Trailblazing Life of Susan Dimock, MD, is the subject of her PowerPoint presentation today.
