American Medical Biographies/Greenough, Francis Boott
Greenough, Francis Boott (1837–1904)
Francis Boott Greenough was born in Boston, December 24, 1837. He was the son of Henry and Frances Boott Greenough, his mother being a niece of Kirk Boott, one of the first cotton manufacturers of Lowell, Massachusetts.
Graduating from Harvard College in 1859 and from Harvard Medical School in 1866, the University gave him her A. M. in 1870. Previous to graduating in medicine he spent a year in the Lawrence Scientific School connected with Harvard, and went abroad for two years studying architecture and medicine at Pisa and Florence.
Greenough was acting assistant surgeon in the United States Army during the summer and autumn of 1864 and returning to Boston was house physician in the Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1865 and 1866 after graduating from the medical school he spent a year in Vienna, and in October, 1867, began to practise medicine in Boston. He gave his greatest attention to skin diseases and syphilis from the first and in the later years of his practice was regarded as an authority on genito-urinary diseases and syphilis. He was clinical instructor in syphilis in the Harvard Medical School from 1875 to 1895. He was in charge of the department of skin and venereal diseases of the Boston Dispensary from 1873 to 1900. At one time he was surgeon to the Carney Hospital (1868–1876), also to St. Joseph's Home, and physician to the Children's Hospital.
He was a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, and other societies. His tall, commanding presence was a familiar figure on the streets of Boston for thirty years.
Dr. Greenough never married and retired from active practice several years before his death, which occurred in Brookline, Massachusetts, October 16, 1904.
Among his writings are: "Treatment of Permanent Urethral Stricture," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. lxxvii, 164; "Pediculi Vestamentorum," ibid, vol. lxxvii, 221; "Gonorrheal Rheumatism," ibid., vol. lxxvii, 411.