Susan Dimock

Susan Dimock M.D. (April 24, 1847 – May 7, 1875) was a pioneer in American Medicine who received her qualification as a doctor from the University of Zurich in 1871 and was subsequently appointed resident physician of the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1872. The hospital, now known as the Dimock Community Health Center, was renamed in her honor after her tragic drowning in 1875. Dimock was traveling to Europe for pleasure and profession when she died in the shipwreck of the SS Schiller off the coast of the Scilly Isles. She is also remembered for becoming the first woman member of the North Carolina Medical Society.

Doctor Susan Dimock was born in Washington, North Carolina, the daughter of Henry and Mary Malvina (Owens) Dimock. The family descended from Thomas Dimock who emigrated from England to Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1637 and later resettled in Barnstable, Massachusetts. Susan Dimock was a distant cousin of Ira Dimock (1827–1917), a silk manufacturer, and she was also related to Henry F. Dimock, a New York City attorney associated with the Whitney family business interests. Her father, who was a native of Limington, Maine, was appointed headmaster of Roxbury High School in 1831 even though he was entirely self-educated. Later he moved to North Carolina where he taught school, studied law and was admitted to the bar, and served as editor of the North State Whig. His wife Mary was also a schoolteacher and supplemented their income by managing a hotel.

After Dimock's father died in 1863, Susan Dimock was home-schooled by her mother. At the close of the Civil War she moved with her mother to Sterling, Massachusetts, where she attended a girls' school and undertook an ambitious reading of every medical textbook she could borrow. In the fall of 1865 she taught school at Hopkinton, Massachusetts. On January 10, 1866, she entered the New England Hospital for Women and Children where she began to learn medicine by close observation in the wards and dispensary. Dimock was also permitted to attend clinical rounds at Massachusetts General Hospital as well as those of the Eye and Ear Infirmary.

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