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VOLUME 44 DECEMBER 1969 NUMBER 6
COMMENTARIES
EDWARDS
A.
PARK
E
DWARDS A. PARK, who influenced the science, art, and life of so manypedia-tricians in his own and later generations, died on July 11, 1969. He was born 91 years
ago at Gloversville, New York, educated at Phillips Andover Academy, Yale, and Co-lumbia’s College of Physicians and Sur-geons, from which he graduated in 1905. His first venture into pediatrics was a 6-months’ residency at the New
York
Found-ling
Hospital,
with
John
Howland
as anat-tending physician. In 1912, Dr. Howland, as Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins, invited Dr. Park to Baltimore. He came,
bringing with him as Mrs. Park the Agnes
Bevan whom he had met the year before in London. What she contributed to all the goodness of his later life can not even be estimated.
At
Baltimore, in what was even then rec-ognized by those who shared it as a golden age, Dr. Park launched his research uponwhat
Dr.
Gamble
later
called
“that
grand
old disease, rickets.” With characteristic thoroughness,
Dr. Park
went on toinvesti-gate and clarify the anatomy and biochem-istry of normal and abnormal bone growth.
This was a life-long interest and the subject of perhaps his last scientific publication2 some 50 years later.
After returning briefly to Johns Hopkins from a World War I absence in France
with the American Red Cross, Dr. Park
ac-cepted the Professorship of Pediatrics at
Yale. Seven years later he came back again,
this time as Dr. Howland’s successor. As Professor of Pediatrics and
Pediatrician-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins until his retirement
in 1947, his teaching and his example illu-minated the paths of the scores of staff and students who later, as professors and practi-tioners themselves, carried some of that same light to their own students of yester-day and today.
Anyone who knew Dr. Park does not eas-ily stop talking, or writing, about him. His teaching built foundations for the
pediat-rics taught today; his scientific contribu-tions stand as models of industry, accuracy, and perception; his quiet but deep concern
over the maldistribution of medical care 20 to 30 years ago was in advance of its time.
But the essence of his special value was his rare character, his immediate and deep in-terest in people-and therefore in life. This made him, even in the prolonged illnesses
of his later
years, when the shaky writingtells of difficulties undescribed, a
correspon-dent whose letters
are
treasured by many a recipient. The same interest made for theunusually close ties between Dr. Park and those fortunate enough to have been on his departmental faculty and house staff.
Though he never bestowed it erroneously,
he had, to an unusual degree, the gift of
appreciation. James Gamble once mused, anent some locally prominent but still
na-tionally obscure young Hopkins instructor that, “all Ned’s geese are swans.” While Dr.
Gamble would never have spoken thus to
EDWARDS A. PARK
his beloved Ned, he told him something else related to birds in presenting the
Kober Medal of the Association of
Amen-can
Physicians in 1950:“The Park family has always managed to
live in a region of trees and birds. As a
visi-tor to that home of limitless hospitality, I recall walks in the hills behind New Haven
and in the woods at the end of The Valley
in Baltimore, in the company of students,
internes, and young investigators. They
learned a bit of ornithology by looking
through Ned’s binoculars, which they may have perhaps forgotten, but what they saw through the prisms of his personality they
did not forget.”
Recent overuse has dulled the meaning
of the word “personality,” but at its best it
explains much of Dr. Park’s special value.
When someone once asked about James
Burrill Angell, great President of the Uni-versity of Michigan, 1871-1909, “But what
did Dr. Angell
do?”
he was wiselyan-swered: “Dr. Angell didn’t have to do
any-thing. He was.”3 Dr. Park did much, some
of it touched upon here, more to be read
about in Dr. Gamble’s presentation1 and
elsewhere. But Dr. Park, even more
impor-tantly, like Dr. Angell, was. Indeed, he is
and will be, as a special person to a grateful
multitude. Four of the many whose lives he touched unforgettably have written of him
as follows:
From Canada, S. G. R. recalls the early days:
“My first meeting with Dr. Park occurred in the spring of 1920. Attracted by the fame
of the Hopkins Pediatric Clinic under Dr.
John Howland, I visited Baltimore seeking employment. Dr. Howland received me
graciously and offered me a position as a
voluntary assistant. The interview
con-cluded, Ned Park stepped into the picture
and offered this unknown Canadian bed
and board for the night. The unexpected
guest was received graciously by his
charm-ing wife. One knows of many others who
have enjoyed the same spontaneous
hospi-tality throughout the years. It exemplified the innate kindness of this man.
“Everyone is aware of Dr. Park’s
dedica-tion to the study of the bone pathology of
rickets and his classical work on this
sub-ject. Even after his retirement from active
participation in the clinic he continued this
study. For thirty years he spent his
sum-mers at his camp on the Margaree River in
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Here in this
lovely valley he found peace and relaxation.
He was known and beloved by all the
in-habitants of the valley. He became an
ar-dent salmon fisherman and,
charactenis-tically, a close student of that fish. He took
up
fly-tying
and the Park’ fly was one ofhis creations.
“During his long summers at the
Mar-garee, Ned’s conscience seemed to demand
that he take some unfinished work to be
completed there. On the writer’s first visit with Ned, the view which met the eye on entering his cottage was a long table. At
one end of this stood the microscope and a
collection of slides, while at the opposite end was all the material, including a vise,
for tying salmon flies. Ned explained with
an apologetic smile that each morning
when he arose his New England conscience
underwent a severe test. Which end would
he choose for that day?
“A year ago it was again my privilege to
spend a week at the Margaree with Ned.
Although no longer able to fish he still
came down to the river where from his
seat on the bank he enjoyed the view and
the memories of bygone days.
“Ned died and was buried on the
Mar-garee and his spirit will long hover over his
beloved Arcadia. It has been a rare privi-lege to have been accepted as one of his friends.”
And from England, A. W. F.:
“Ned Park was a giant, but a giant with
a gentle touch, who left his mark on pediat-rics and on many pediatricians. He was possessed of a divine dissatisfaction com-pounded of humility, scepticism and a thirst for exact knowledge. He knew that in his patient, lifelong studies of rickets and
bone histology, no answer would ever be
“We shall nuiss this gentle, humble and opened of further goals ahead. This made
him the ideal chef de clinique, providing an
abundance of research problems for his
pu-pils and colleagues. While he spared noth-ing in his criticism of others, he carried
self-criticism to an almost masochistic pitch. This portrait of his serious nature, given as it is, contrasts with the portrait of the whimsical father of a devoted family and of the constant friend. At home, on the
Sun-day morning walks into the country spying
out falcons, reconnoitering the battleground
of Gettysburg or Valley Forge, he was the
gayest of companions. He was greatly aided
in reaching the heights by Agnes, her
En-glish feet ever firmly planted on the solid
earth of practicality. Life has been richer for all those who worked under him at the
Harriet Lane and enjoyed the freedom of
his home.”
A.I.
S. writes especially of the teacher:“The Harriet Lane Home service under
Edwards A. Park seemed totally different from the prior one under John Howland.
Dr. Howland was a Geheimrat. He was
aristocratic and autocratic, brilliant and strongwilled, stimulating and demanding;
and aloof. Dr. Park was equally brilliant
and equally aristocratic; but he was
soft-spoken and humble and not one whit
auto-cratic. We looked up to Dr. lowland and
admired him prodigiously; we were also a little afraid of him. Within months after Dr.
Park’s return to the Hopkins we had all
come to love him.
“His daily noon conferences were joys to
attend. Sonue of us, despite the pressures of
demanding practices and the financial
strin-gencies of those depression years, never
dreamed of missing any one of them. A case would be presented by an intern,
com-mented upon briefly by the Resident, then discussed in detail by one of Ned’s dedi-cated subspecialists. (Specialty Clinics, you will remember, were one of his major
con-tributions to Pediatrics.) The discussant might have been Emmett Holt, or Rusty Macintosh, Hugh Josephs or Leo Kanner, Helen Taussig or Lawson Wilkins, or one of us lesser lights. Then Dr. Park would begin
to probe. Every item of fact had to be
yen-fled, every step in the logical sequence which followed substantiated, every loose end secured. Each physiologic and patho-logic lead had to be followed to its ultimate
conclusion. His questions may have been
asked softly, hesitanfly, almost
apologeti-cally, but each one was apropos, pointed
and searching. He was no intuitive
diagnos-tician. He rejected short cuts and abhorred guesses. He demanded the truth, the whole
truth,
and nothing
but the truth.
What
les-sons these hours were for budding doctors!
“Ned’s home was always open to us.
Most Sunday afternoons a group would
gather, often including Cam Goodwin, John Washington, Tom Scott, Horace Hodes, Mitch Rubin and Helen Taussig, among others, with or without wives and children. If the weather were fine, he might take us
on a ‘hawk walk,’ chatting pleasantly and
informatively about hunting birds and how
they were trained and used through the
centuries. Or he might
sit in
the clutteredlivingroom and tie dry flies, dreaming up
new combinations of gaily colored feathers in preparation for the summer on his be-loved Margaree, here again taking the lead-ing role in animated conversation about anything and everything. He had total
re-call, and could remember events from the distant past down to the last detail. He spiced his stories with verbatim quotations from the Greeks or the Romans, or the Lake poets, or the early American writers. His store of knowledge was prodigious, and his dry sense of humor spiced all that he
said. There was not a moment of tedium.
“Ned had inherited none of Jonathan
Ed-wards’ religious zeal but there was some of
wise man. I know I shall never again
en-counter his equal.”
And, to conclude, H. B. T.:
“Ned Park was a wonderful and loyal
friend as well as a great teacher and leader in medicine. He combined in an extraordi-nary manner, learning, breadth of knowl-edge, a keen analytical mind, and a puck-like sense of humor, with a great love and a deep interest in humanity. He often said it was harder to know what was right than to
do what
was right.
Nevertheless,
his friends
looked to him for guidance with complete confidence that he did know what was
right, as indeed he did. Thus he became one of the guiding lights of progressive American medicine, always focusing on what was fundamentally best and right for the people of the country.
“He was a stern critic of his own genera-tion and a friendly critic of younger people. Throughout his life he maintained a gen-uine interest in every doctor who had the privilege of studying with him. He was anx-ious and eager to help each and every
per-son develop to his fullest his individual po-tentiality. At the same time he never inter-fered with their plans.
“He fulfilled to an extraordinary extent
A. Lawrence Lowell’s definition of a truly
educated man: ‘one who could talk to any
man about that man’s particular speciality.’
He took his staff to Gettysburg and as he tramped over the battlefield he discussed
the civil war. Other great battles and wars
also interested him. He read widely and would analyze great men as revealed in their biographies. With his towering intel-lect and his tremendous knowledge he would discuss philosophy, religion, politics and policies, and in each fathomed the basic elements. Combined with these inter-ests he had a deep appreciation of art, music, science and poetry. His puritanical
background never left him but it never lim-ited his horizon or restricted him in any
way.
“For several years after retirement he
suffered
from
tic
douloureux.
With theacute episodes of excruciating pain canue complete silence but no word of complaint.
Similarly in later years when he became lame and limited in strength, he only re-gretted his ‘decrepitude.’ Even as his physical strength failed, he had the great
satisfaction that doctors still brought their papers to him for criticism.
“In the summers he completely changed his spots. For more than thirty years he and his wife and his children spent their sum-mers in Nova Scotia at the Northeast Mar-garee. First they camped, then they built a
platform
for
the tent, and then a cabin witha central living room, a kitchen at one end
and their bedroom at the other end, and
then a guest house for two persons, and the
‘monastery’ for a single man. Ned was an
ardent fisherman. Fishing combined the art
of casting, knowledge of the habits of fish, the natural beauty of the streams and birds
in the woods, strenuous physical exercise,
and the simple life. All these he loved. In
the evenings he tied flies for himself and
his friends and read aloud to his family.
“It was there at the Northeast Margaree that his youngest son was married. It was
there that he and Agnes celebrated their
golden wedding. After Agnes’ death in
1966, he could never again bear to sleep in
their room, so he moved to the ‘monastery.’
“On June 19, 1969 we once again reached
his beloved Margaree. He walked out to
the frog pond and down to the stream.
Throughout his life he remained a teacher
at heart; while sitting beside the stream he
gave me instructions in casting and advised
me where the trout lay. He read aloud in
the evenings. We had four lovely days
be-fore he had a coronary. He could and did
analyze his condition accurately and knew it was the beginning of the end. His mind
remained clear and he even discussed ‘Anna Karenina’ with his daughter-in-law when she stepped into his cabin. One of his last remarks was ‘I have lived a good life and am ready to go, E. A. P.’ He was cared for
by his family and friends and spent his last
days in the ‘monastery’ where he died on
July 11th, 1969, in the land and place he
REFERENCES
1. Gamble, J. L.: Presentation of the Kober Medal to Dr. Edwards A. Park. Trans. Ass. Amer. Phys., 63:21, 1950.
2. Park, E. A.: The imprinting of nutritional
dis-turbances on the growing bone. PEDIATRICS, 33:815, 1964.
3. Smith, S. W.: James Burrill Angell, an
Ameri-can Influence. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Univer-sity of Michigan Press, 1954.
PLAUSI
BI LIII ES AND
POSS
IBI LIII ES IN
EARLY
EDUCATION
E
ARLY education became a topic of great public interest about 5 yearsago, when Head Start was being
estab-lished and support was being mustered for
it. One problem maintaining the racial issue clearly lay in the schools. Minority group
children were flunking out of society in
their public school years and more and
more evidence showed that their difficulties
were already apparent in the first grade. It
seemed reasonable, then, to move toward
preparing
these children for school by theestablishment
of programs
of preschool
edu-cation.
However reasonable the mission of
com-pensatory preschool education, its
imple-mentation had to be attempted in the face
of important shortages of information and
resources. There was much missing 5 years
ago that is still missing today. We have
only marginal evidence suggesting that pre-school education will improve the intellec-tual status of the child or his coping with
school to any significant degree. We have few developed prototypes of preschool pro-grams. We face a shortage of experienced persormel at all levels of administration, im-plementation, development, and assessment of preschool education. These problems are
substantial and because of them one must
regard the national venture into early edu-cation as a gamble-a very worthwhile gamble but, still, an enterprise which must
await future findings for solid support and justification.
Perhaps because of all the uncertainties,
there has been an imbalance in recent dis-cussions of the scientific rationale for early education. Preschool efforts draw upon a warm vein of human concern about chil-dren, and few can be perfectly
cold-blooded about such work. So, one has found in the press and even in the more
specialized literature a slightly overheated rhetoric in which various scientific findings have been called upon to emphasize the
justifications for preschool education-the
positive-going findings dwelt upon, the neg-ative-going findings less emphasized and less fully discussed.
