Dr. Zabdiel Boylston (1680-1766)

If Zabdiel Boylston fit the mold of a hero, it was more as an American frontiersman than as an icon of medicine and science. No portrait survives, but we know he was:

· From a farm in the remote hamlet of Muddy River on the outskirts of Boston, at the edge of the American wilderness (a place now known as Brookline)
· Quiet, with a dry sense of humor
· Fiercely independent
· Trained as a surgeon by apprenticeship. He held no university or medical degrees
· Exceptionally gifted and daring as a surgeon. He performed the first mastectomy in North America; the woman, then in her 30's, seems to have survived into her 80's.
· A slaveholder
· A superb horseman

Two Horses in a Landscape
By George Stubbs (1724-1806)
Private Collection
Photo © Christie's Images /
The Bridgeman Art Library International