Willard Parker (surgeon)

Willard Parker (1800 to 1884) was an American surgeon who taught for many years at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. Born in North Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, he graduated from Harvard College in 1826, turned from plans for the ministry to medicine, studied privately under John C. Warren and received his M.D. from Harvard in 1830. He held chairs of anatomy and surgery at the Vermont, Berkshire and Cincinnati medical colleges before joining the New York college in 1839, where he served thirty years as professor of surgery. In 1840 he had cases from city dispensaries brought into the college's anatomical theatre, which was the first college clinic in the United States. He organized the New York Pathological Society in 1843 and the New York Academy of Medicine in 1847, helped turn the city almshouse into Bellevue Hospital, and worked to create the New York City Board of Health. In 1865 he became president of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, the first institution established to treat inebriety as a disease.