Topic: Medicine
Medicine, doctors, hospitals, pharmaceuticals
Dr. Thomas Jenks, one of Boston’s leading figures in medicine, business, and politics during the late-eighteenth century, lived in the West End for most of his life. In 1893, when Jenks chaired the Board of Public Institutions, his refusal to accept a donation of rocking chairs to the Rainsford Island hospital put him at odds with Alice Lincoln, an advocate for the poor in Boston, and Martin Lomasney, the political boss of the West End.
Massachusetts General Hospital was built in the early nineteenth century on four acres of land in the old West End called Prince’s Pasture. Many doctors and prominent citizens of Boston can be counted among its founders.
Elizabeth Mott and her husband, Dr. Richard Dixon Mott, were nineteenth-century British immigrants who established a botanical medicine practice at the Otis House, located in today’s West End.
Dr. Tony Minichiello was a dentist who turned a love of jazz into a specialty – operating on jazz musicians.
Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African-American woman to receive an M.D. degree, overcoming the dual discrimination of racism and sexism. She briefly resided on Joy Street at the north slope of Beacon Hill.
