 |
Annella Brown was also an avid art collector. When she retired in 1990, she pursued her interest in art full time. (David Adame/Associated Press/File 2003) |
Annella Brown, Boston's first female surgeon
In 1977, a news report said Annella Brown, a Boston surgeon and art collector, had arrived in a blue-and-white helicopter on the lawn of Mentmore Towers, the Rothchild estate in Buckinghamshire, England, for an auction. She "paid $58,480 for a pair of Louis XV corner cupboards, made about 1725," it said.
Her dramatic entrance did not surprise those who knew her. She was a woman who believed life was a feast to be savored and shared with others. She was flamboyant and "maybe a little eccentric," said her niece, Barbara A. Hawkins of Brookline.
But friends and family said that for Dr. Brown, a pioneering surgeon, medicine always came first.
Dr. Brown, who served at several Massachusetts hospitals before moving her practice to Milton Hospital in 1961, died of congestive heart failure on April 13 at her home in Miami. She was 88.
She launched her medical career at a time when women physicians, and especially surgeons, were not universally accepted.
Another niece, Deborah C. Travers of Darien, Conn., said that Dr. Brown was recruited to Massachusetts in 1949 by the New England Hospital for Women and Children. During that time, she said, Dr. Brown became the fifth nationally certified woman surgeon and the only woman surgeon in Boston and New England accredited by the American Surgical Board. She held that distinction for the next 10 years, Travers said.
Dr. Brown often treated patients for cancer of the breast, colon, and thyroid. She was also among the first physicians to use chemotherapy, Travers said.
Dr. Joan Peterson of Newton, the anesthesiologist for many of Dr. Brown's surgeries, recalled the fun and camaraderie that existed among the surgical team. Dr. Brown was "certainly feisty, even obstinate," she said.
"But people always used to say that if you wanted to see the wonderful side of Annella, you have to be one of her patients. She would turn heaven and earth for them," Peterson said.
She also recalled dinners at some of Dr. Brown's several local residences, where the guests included "earls and lords" from the artistic side of Dr. Brown's life.
Once Dr. Brown retired from Milton Hospital in 1990, she was able to pursue her interest in art full time. She had already studied the history of art at Wellesley College when she became a collector and connoisseur of 18th-century French furniture, Travers said. Sometimes she was guest lecturer in the graduate program of fine arts at Harvard.
She also was interested jewelry. Gloria Lieberman, director of fine jewelry at Skinner's auctioneers in Boston and a friend since 1980, said Dr. Brown "had an unusual eye for zeroing in on Cartier jewels. She bought and sold many times."
While Dr. Brown's joy was in the sport of buying and selling precious jewels, her family said, she did not necessarily wear many. She did have a favorite piece, Travers said, "a Cartier necklace, which she bought and sold three times."
A 2006 Globe story said that over the years Dr. Brown had spent "more than $1 million on jewelry, including $70,000 for a stunning jeweled bracelet by Italian designer Anna Bachelli." Dr. Brown told the Globe she had sold her collection of French furniture to
She was born in Dublin, Ga., into a family "without means to speak of," she told the Globe. Her brother, Moody of Lenox, said he considered her "a child prodigy.
"She was 8 when she told our mother she was going to be a doctor, graduated from high school at 15, and from college at 18," he said. "Then, because she couldn't get into medical school until she was 21, she taught and coached basketball in high school in Cairo, Ga."
She entered the University of Georgia Medical School and after two years transferred to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1944 summa cum laude. She interned at Philadelphia General Hospital, and in 1945 moved to the Cleveland Clinic as the first woman surgical resident.
A year after coming to the New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1949, she was named surgeon in chief. While at New England Hospital, Travers said, Dr. Brown was assistant attending surgeon at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital and taught at Boston University and Tufts Medical Schools.
Over the years, Travers said, her aunt restored about a dozen houses, three in the Dordogne Valley and near Lyon, France, "including a shepherd's cottage."
On one trip to Florida, Dr. Brown, who at one point owned 16 houses, according to the Globe, saw an Art Deco home she liked in Miami. It was not for sale but she knocked on the door and convinced the owner to take $100,000 more than he had paid six months earlier.
She also loved luxury cars. When Dr. Brown lived in a large carriage barn she had converted to a residence in Sherborn, she drove a cherry-red Rolls Royce, but not to house calls.
In 1994, Dr. Brown moved permanently to Florida with her longtime friend, Elizabeth Hammond Taylor, who said by phone that they met when Dr. Brown was operating on her at Milton Hospital. Dr. Brown was still driving until three weeks before she died and writing poetry, "but seemed to have lost her fighting spirit," Taylor said.
In addition to Taylor, her brother, and her two nieces, Dr. Brown leaves another niece; and six great-nieces and nephews. Services have been held.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
