Later Life
Parkman was involved with the organization and publication of the The New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery with John Collins Warren and John Ware in 1823. When his father died in 1824, George took complete control of the family estate and bought vast amounts of land and real estate in Boston, including many poorly maintained tenements. Money lending and real estate augmented his income; he also sold the land for the new Harvard Medical School and the Charles Street Jail.
In 1837 he revisited Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, and he sent a letter and some sketches to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, describing some Parisian hospitals.
Parkman was a well-known figure in the streets of Boston, which he walked daily, collecting his rents (a thrifty man, he did not own a horse). He was tall, lean, had a protruding chin, and wore a top hat. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. said that "he abstained while others indulged, he walked while others rode, he worked while others slept." Frances "Fanny" Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow (1817 – 1861), wife of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882), called him "the lean doctor... the good-natured Don-Quixote." He was reported to have a net worth of $500,000 dollars in 1846.
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