Harriot Hunt and the Motts

The treatment Drs. Elizabeth and Richard Dixon Mott provided her sister, Sarah, inspired Harriot Kezia Hunt to learn the Motts' healing practices. However, in 1830s Boston, the Motts were considered quacks. According to the article, "Mrs. Mott, 'The Celebrated Female Physician,'" in Historic New England online magazine (2005):

Boston was also home to many alternative medical practitioners who sought to cure patients without poisonous drugs and strong interventions.... Serious competitors in the burgeoning urban medical marketplace, they advertised their cures in local newspapers and directories and gained followings well beyond Boston. Even so, Mrs. Mott was an anomaly in the early nineteenth century, when both traditional medicine and alternative medicine were male preserves. For centuries women had administered home remedies to their sick relatives, but doctors who had graduated from professional medical training programs began to supplant such female healers. It would take decades for women to gain access to medical schools.

Unitarian Universalist Principles

For more about the Unitarian Universalist Principles read With Purpose and Principle: Essays About the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism, edited by Edward A. Frost (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1998).