Edwards A. Park (doctor)

Edwards A. Park (December 30, 1877 – July 11, 1969) was a pioneering American pediatrician who established the pediatric heart disease clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, along with other pediatric subspecialties. During his career, Park was not only known as the Chief-of-Pediatrics of the Harriet Lane Home for two decades, but also a well-published researcher on medical conditions such as rickets and lead poisoning. The contemporary pediatric department at Hopkins is still regulated in the same way that Park had once 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.

Edwards A. Park
Born(1877-12-30)December 30, 1877
Gloversville, New York
DiedJuly 11, 1969(1969-07-11) (aged 91)
Nova Scotia, Canada
NationalityAmerican
Alma materYale University
OccupationPediatrician, researcher
Years active1905-47
Known forRickets, lead poisoning
Spouse(s)Agnes Bevan (1913-66)

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 graduation, Park refused to follow his father into a religious occupation. He instead debated between a career in medicine and a career in teaching Greek. He eventually decided to pursue medicine shortly after graduating from Yale. Park first received his M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1905 and then went on to become an intern at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York from 1905-1907. He spent the next two years interning at the New York Foundling Hospital, working for six months in pediatrics where Dr. John Howland was an attending physician.[1] Park also spent several months at the City Hospital on Blackwell Island, where he would cultivate pathological skills and insight crucial to his later research in crickets.[2]

Career

Early career

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

World War I

When World War I broke out in 1914, Red Cross sent Park to Le Havre, France to run an orphanage for Belgian children. With a confined staff of only three doctors, a nurse and an executive secretary, Park utilized very limited resources to establish a clinic and a small hospital in the local neighborhood. During this time, Park witnessed first-hand the effects of poverty and malnutrition on disease, which is why he later decided to hire Ruth Washington in the summer of 1918 to build a department of social service.

Johns Hopkins

In 1919, Park returned to the United States and, in particular: Baltimore, Maryland. Following his research with Dr. Howland, Park went to Yale where he would take on the role as the Professor of Pediatrics for seven years. In 1927, Dr. Howland's untimely death caused Park to return to Johns Hopkins to take over as the 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, Park established multiple specialty clinics under pediatrics, with the tuberculosis, cardiac, endocrine, and psychiatric clinics bringing fame to the Harriet Lane Home.[3] He was also known for his daily noon conferences with his staff where an intern, resident and sub-specialist would all review a case. After they presented Park would question all parts, reviewing all steps and small details. Of his questions, one student described them as being "asked softly, hesitantly, almost apologetically, but each one was apropos, pointed and searching"[1] His attention to detail also applied to all publications that came from the Harriet Lane Home, as Park wrote about 30 papers over his twenty years as Chief-of-Pediatrics and reviewed over 100 papers written by his staff. However, Park's most notable achievement as pediatrician in chief stemmed from his well-rounded approach to combining pediatric treatment with holistic research, training, and community involvement.

The Harriet Lane Home
Dr. Park spent half of his life working at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

When Howland died in 1926, Park was inaugurated as the new Professor of Pediatrics who would oversee the operations of the Harriet Lane Home. Thus, Park became the successor of Howland and the third director of the Harriet Lane Home in the two decades that would follow (1926-1947). Only six months after settling into his new position, Park soon came to the realization that children in the Baltimore dispensaries were receiving significantly lower quality care as compared to children who could afford to be treated at the hospital. Frustrated at this social phenomenon, Park went to Dr. Edward Carter, who was then a cardiologist in the Department of Medicine. Park asked Carter whether he would be supportive of his starting a pediatric clinic. On 1 December 1927, Park successfully collaborated with the Rockefeller Institute and the Commonwealth Fund to establish a pediatric heart disease clinic at Johns Hopkins in the outpatient dispensary.[4]

Park's contributions to the Harriet Lane Home were indisputable in the history of Johns Hopkins medicine. Before Park's arrival, the Harriet Lane Home was merely 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 of the hospitals and clinics to adhere entirely to its principles. Under Howland, the university started to pour in intellectual and financial investments to the full-time pediatric system, but Park ultimately played the transitional role in solidifying the longevity of the system. Park invoked concerns about access to and cost of pediatric health care and advocated for central focus surrounding a few particular diseases.[2]

Research
An abnormal bone growth in a child's wrist due to rickets.

Although Park's initial research interests revolved around cardiovascular physiology and cardiac disease, his research later made the most impact in the field of rickets and the growth in bone that indicate the illness.

During Park's time, rickets had been viewed as an enduring and often permanently damaging disease that was especially prominent in the case of infants. Before Park's initial arrival at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Howland and Dr. E.V. McCollum had already begun work on studying rickets - specifically studying the changes in calcium and potassium content of the blood. Dr. Park taught and worked in the Hunterian Lab where he studied histologic changes in the bone, characterizing normal versus abnormal changes in bone growth.[1] He did so by varying dietary deficiencies and through his work discovered that vitamin D can be used to prevent rickets. This work, along with that done by Dr. E.V. McCollum, Dr. Simmonds and Dr. Shipley, led to a total of 23 publications over a brief fifteen-month period.[3]

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 also 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 have three children, two sons and a daughter. 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. It was at his summer home on the Margaree River that Park passed away in 1969 and was later buried.[1]

Awards and honorary degrees
  • M.A. from Yale University (1923)
  • Doctorate of Science from the University of Rochester (1936)
  • Doctorate of Science from Washington University in St. Louis (1950)
  • Association of American Physicians - Kober Award (1950) an award given annually to a member who makes significant contributions to their respective field[5]
  • 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."[6]
  • New York Academy of Medicine - Bronze Medal (1953)
  • Doctorate of Science from Laval University (1955)
  • American Medical Association - Goldberg Nutrition Award (1964)
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References
  1. "Commentaries: Edwards A Park". Pediatrics. 44: 897–901. 1969 – via American Academy of Pediatrics.
  2. "Profiles in Pediatrics". The Journal of Pediatrics. 125: 1009–1013. 1994. doi:10.1016/s0022-3476(05)82027-x.
  3. "Edwards A. Park 1878–1969". The Journal of Pediatrics. 77: 722–731. 1970. doi:10.1016/s0022-3476(70)80222-0.
  4. "Helen Brooke Taussig and Edwards Albert Park: the early years (1927-1930)". Cardiology in the Young. 20: 387–395. 2010.
  5. "George M. Kober Medal and Lectureship". Association of American Physicians.
  6. "John Holland Award". American Pediatric Society.
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