Edwards A. Park

Edwards A. Park (December 30, 1877 – July 11, 1969) was an American pediatrician who established the pediatric heart disease clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, along with other pediatric subspecialties. Park was chief of Pediatrics at the Harriet Lane Home for two decades, and published articles on medical conditions such as rickets and lead poisoning.

The contemporary pediatric department at Hopkins is still regulated in the same way that Park established. The Edwards A. Park Scholarship Fund at Johns Hopkins was built under his name upon his eightieth birthday by friends, colleagues and former students.

Early life

Park was born in Gloversville, New York, on December 30, 1877. His father was a local Congregational minister.

Park attended Yale University and earned his B.A. degree in 1900. After his graduation, Park declined to follow his father into a religious occupation. He instead debated between a career in medicine and one in teaching Greek. He eventually decided to pursue medicine shortly after graduating from Yale University.

Park received his M.D. degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1905. He was an intern at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York from 1905 to 1907. He spent the next two years as an intern at the New York Foundling Hospital, working for six months in pediatrics, where Dr. John Howland was an attending physician. Park also spent several months at the City Hospital on Blackwell Island, where he cultivated pathological skills and insight crucial to his later research in rickets.

Career Early career After completing varying internships, Park began his career at a private practice from 1909 to 1912, where he worked for Theodore Caldwell Janeway as an office assistant. WithJaneway, Park published his first paper in 1910, focused on the contractions of arteries, which they had studied in vitro. In 1912, Park wrote his first pediatrics paper while studying pathology at Roosevelt Island. During that summer, he also went to Marburg, Germany, to study under Schmidt, the world's leading expert in rickets at the time. While abroad, Park was offered a position by Howland to join his first pediatric staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Although Park initially declined because he was working with Janeway and felt obliged to stay in the position, he later joined the small staff in an effort of creating a new full-time department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins.

World War I When World War I broke out in 1914, the American Red Cross sent Park to Le Havre, France, to run an orphanage for Belgian children. With a limited staff of only three doctors, a nurse, and an executive secretary, he established a clinic and a small hospital in the local neighborhood. He witnessed first-hand the effects of poverty and malnutrition on disease. This experience affected his decision to hire Ruth Wendell Washburn in the summer of 1918 and build a department of social service.

Johns Hopkins In 1919, Park returned to Baltimore, Maryland. Following his research with Howland, he went to Yale where he took on the role as the professor of Pediatrics for seven years. In 1927, Howland's death caused Park to return to Johns Hopkins to take over as professor of Pediatrics and chief of Pediatrics. In 1946, Park was also named the professor emeritus of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine. As chief of Pediatrics of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he established multiple specialty clinics under pediatrics, with tuberculosis, cardiac, endocrine, and psychiatric clinics, bringing fame to the Harriet Lane Home.

Before Park's arrival, the Harriet Lane Home was an obscure clinic where pediatrics was viewed as a specialty that held very little status. Although the full-time system had recently begun to flourish in the United States, it was difficult for most hospitals and clinics to adhere entirely to its principles. Under Howland, the university started to pour intellectual and financial investments into a full-time pediatric system, but Park ultimately played the transitional role in ensuring the permanence of the system. Park invoked concerns about access to and cost of pediatric health care, and advocated for a central focus surrounding a few particular diseases.

Park's other research interests were reflected in his study of bone structure where growth has been malignantly halted by illness. Through X-ray examinations, he discovered that bone growth proceeds horizontally so that a dense horizontal line of bone builds up during a disease phase, despite the cartilage arrest. Park received the Goldberger Award for this study at the age of 85, and he included his findings through years of bone growth research in the publication of his last paper in 1964.

Personal life and family While working at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Park lived in Garrison, Maryland, with his wife, Agnes Bevan, an English woman he had met in London in 1911. Together, they had three children.

Referred to as "Ned" by his friends and colleagues, Park was known for having people over to his home and summer home in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. There, Park continued his research and fished for salmon, designing the "Park fly" to better catch them. At his summer home on the Margaree River, Park died in 1969, and was later buried there. Doctorate of Law from Johns Hopkins University (1951) American Pediatric Society - inaugural John Howland Award (1952) an award given annually for "distinguished service to pediatrics as a whole." New York Academy of Medicine - Bronze Medal (1953) Doctorate of Science from Laval University (1955) American Medical Association - Goldberg Nutrition Award (1964)