Peter Parker (physician)

Portrait of Parker by Lam Qua

Peter Parker (1804–1888) was an American physician and a missionary who introduced Western medical techniques into Qing Dynasty China. It was said that Parker "opened China to the gospel at the point of a lancet."

Early life

Parker was born in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1804 to an orthodox Congregational family. His parents were farmers. Parker received a B.A. degree from Yale University in 1831, and his M.D. degree from the Yale Medical School, then called Medical Institution of Yale College, in 1834. In January 1834, he completed his theological studies at Yale and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

Parker's former residence in Washington, D.C.

China

In February 1834, Parker traveled to Canton, where he had the distinction of being the first full-time Protestant medical missionary to China. In 1835, he opened in that city the Ophthalmic Hospital, which later became the Guangzhou Boji Hospital (the Canton Hospital). Parker specialized in diseases of the eye, including cataracts, and also resected tumors. Parker also introduced Western anesthesia in the form of sulphuric ether. He served as president of the Medical Missionary Society of China after his mentor Thomas Richardson Colledge.

In 1844, Parker worked as Caleb Cushing's main interpreter during the negotiations of the Treaty of Wanghia with the Qing Empire. The treaty stipulated that it could be renegotiated after 12 years and in 1856, president Franklin Pierce sent Parker to China in order to revise the treaty and gain more concessions from the Qing Empire, but was eventually unsuccessful in this endeavor.

Lam Qua portraits

While in China, Parker met Lam Qua, a Western-trained Chinese painter. Parker commissioned Lam Qua to paint patients at the Canton Hospital with large tumors or other major deformities. Some of the paintings are part of a collection of Lam Qua's work held by the Peter Parker Collection at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University. Parker left these portraits to the Pathology Department of the Yale Medical School, which later gave them to the Library.

Reference

Edward V. Gulick. Peter Parker and the Opening of China. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Harvard Studies in American-East Asian Relations 3, 1973). ISBN 0674663268.

External links

• Peter Parker Collection Yale University
• Chang, J. A reconstructive surgeon's taste in art: Dr Peter Parker and the Lam Qua oil paintings Ann Plast Surg. (1993)
• Christopher Gundman, "Peter Parker," Biographical Dictionary of Christianity in China [2]
• Hume, Edward Peter Parker and the Introduction of Anesthesia into China Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1946)
• Rachman, Stephen Memento Morbi: Lam Qua’s Paintings, Peter Parker’s Patients Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University