Willard Parker / [William Chittenden Lusk].

  • Lusk, William Chittenden, 1868-1934.
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Willard Parker / [William Chittenden Lusk]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ROY MOODIf collection Reprint from SURGERY, GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS, October, 1925, pages 525-528 WILLARD PARKER By WILLIAM CHITTENDEN LUSK, M.D., F.A.C.S., New York tlE nobility of the soul, the loftiness of the ideals, the force of the char¬ acter and the influences of the life, of an illustrious man of the past, can be vividly portrayed to posterity no more aptly than through the voice of the man’s contemporaries. Thus for telling truly and graphically the tale of the distinguished life of Dr. Willard Parker, there have been selected from the memorial address to the latter, delivered before the New York Academy of Medicine by his intimate friend, Dr. William H. Draper,1 the following passages: “ Nearly six months ago that familiar and honored name, Willard Parker, was blotted from our roll, but in our memories it is so deeply graven that the sound of it will always recall to mind one of the most notable figures in the circle of dis¬ tinguished men in which he moved for so many years. He filled, perhaps, for a long period, a larger place in popular and professional esteem than any of his contemporaries, not because of his superior genius, nor because of great acquire¬ ments, but rather because of a character that somehow grasped at once the affec¬ tions of his fellow men, and made them trust and honor him. “ and yet there are few perhaps who lived nearer to him than I did for more than thirty years, no one I am sure he inspired with a warmer affection or more exalted regard. ... I can only crave your indulgence if I seem to exag¬ gerate his virtues or to overestimate the influence which he exerted for more than forty years in this city as a physician and a public teacher. “The story of Dr. Parker’s life is not so remarkable for the incidents or even for the achievements of his career, as it is for the singular power he wielded in his professional relations to his patients, his pupils, and the public through the simple force of his personality. “He was born with the century, which his life nearly spanned, in the town of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire. . . . He was inspired by his Puritan fore¬ fathers with the love of freedom and the dignity of labor. He tilled the soil on his father’s farm. ... He prepared himself for college with the rewards of his own toil, and graduated at Harvard in 1826. His ardent religious nature inclined him to the profession of the ministry, but an incident in his Freshman year happily diverted his thoughts toward a calling in which his mind escaped the fetters of 1 Tr. M. Soc. New York State, 1885, p. 328. Published by Surgical Pub. Co., Chicago, U.S.A.