Peter Parker (physician)

Peter Parker (1804 to 1888) was an American physician and Presbyterian missionary who brought Western medical practice to China. Born to a farming family in Framingham, Massachusetts, he took a B.A. at Yale in 1831 and an M.D. at the Yale medical school in 1834, and was ordained the same year. He reached Canton in 1834 as the first full-time Protestant medical missionary to China and in 1835 opened the Ophthalmic Hospital, later the Canton Hospital. Parker specialised in diseases of the eye, including cataracts, removed tumours, and introduced sulphuric ether anaesthesia. The hospital admitted over two thousand patients in its first year and he trained Chinese students in medicine and surgery. He also served as an interpreter and acting chargé d'affaires in American diplomacy with the Qing empire, and his patients were painted by the artist Lam Qua.