Dr. Susan Dimock: Pioneer Physician

Susan Dimock grew up in Washington, North Carolina, in this very neighborhood, and as a girl she was already studying medical texts and riding along on calls with the local family doctor. Harvard Medical School refused her application because she was a woman. She went instead to the University of Zurich, earning her medical degree in eighteen seventy-one, and was appointed resident physician of the New England Hospital for Women and Children the following year.

She became the first woman admitted to the North Carolina Medical Society, as an honorary member. In eighteen seventy-five, at only twenty-eight years old, she died when her ship wrecked off the coast of England. The hospital where she worked would eventually be renamed the Dimock Community Health Center in her honor, a name it carries in Boston to this day.