International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol 37, No. 3
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The Legacy of Peter Parker, M.D. Gerald H. Anderson orn in Framingham, Massachusetts, on June 18, 1804, The Missionary BPeter Parker was the fifth of six children, the son of a poor farmer.1 There was no reason to imagine that he would Following his ordination as a Presbyterian minister on May 16, become one of the American pioneers in developing relations Parker was commissioned on June 1 in New York City as a mis- with China in the nineteenth century. sionary to China and given formal instruction by the Prudential As a teenager in a pious Christian family, he had a religious Committee of the American Board. In the instructions, he was conversion experience, which led him to feel that God was calling advised to focus his work on “the circulation of the Scriptures him to the ministry. He preached his first sermon on November & other religious books, & tracts, & the direct preaching of the 2, 1826, on the text Luke 21:30 (“As soon as [fig trees] sprout Gospel.” Beyond that he was told: leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near”).2 The following year, at the age of twenty-three, The medical and surgical knowledge you have acquired, you already contemplating the possibility of missionary service to an will employ, as you have opportunity, in relieving bodily afflic- overseas field if not to the American Indians, he entered Amherst tions of the people. You will also be ready, as you can, to aid in giving to them our arts and sciences. But these . are to receive (Mass.) College. your attention only as they can be made handmaids to the gos- After three years at Amherst he became dissatisfied with the pel. The character of a physician, or of a man of science, . you life and resources there. He considered transferring to Harvard will never suffer to supersede or interfere with your character of for his senior year, but, concerned about the Unitarian influ- a teacher of religion.4 ence at Harvard, he transferred instead to Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Little did Parker realize the momentous tensions that these After graduating from Yale with a B.A. degree in September instructions, with competing demands, would create for him—and 1831, Parker visited Rufus Anderson, senior secretary of the for the American Board—in the years ahead, primarily because American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who the role of “medical missionary” was only beginning to emerge, encouraged him to continue his studies at Yale. In October 1831 and he would be caught in the process of clarifying that role. Parker applied to the ABCFM for missionary service and began The basic issue was over the relation of a ministry of healing to graduate studies at Yale in both theology and medicine, with a a ministry of evangelism: did the task of healing have its own view to service in China. He chose to study medicine and sur- integrity as a form of Christian mission, or was it only a means gery because he believed it would make him a more effective to an end—an instrument for conversion? Parker was instructed missionary. In 1833, as he began his final year of study, Parker reactivated his application to the ABCFM, which approved him for service and assigned him to China following his expected graduation in Little did Parker realize the September 1834. However, in January 1834 he met David W. C. momentous tensions that Olyphant, an American merchant in the China trade, who offered him free passage to China on the Morrison in May or June, which these instructions, with seemed to be a providential opportunity. competing demands, would There was a problem, however. Parker was already in an create for him—and for the accelerated program at Yale to complete both the M.D. degree and his theological studies (for which no degree was given then) American Board. in three years, with graduation in September 1834. Normally, at that time, each graduate program would have required two years. Now Parker wanted to finish in March, a total of only two to do both, but what did it mean to say that “his medical and and a half years for both programs. He appealed to both faculties surgical knowledge” should be employed “only as they can and, eventually, after examination, was approved for graduation. be handmaids to the gospel”? The issues of relating healing to There is an undocumented legend at Yale that the faculties of evangelism, and the relative priority of each, would be defining divinity and medicine had reservations about approving Parker issues for Parker’s missionary career. for graduation under this accelerated schedule, but they finally On June 4, 1834, Parker sailed from New York for Canton did so on the condition that he would neither preach nor practice on the merchant ship Morrison. He went with some apprehen- medicine in the United States.3 sion that he would never return or see his family again.5 He also went as a single man, apparently with little thought about his prospects for marriage. Gerald H. Anderson, a senior contributing editor, is Parker was not the first trained medical person to be sent Director Emeritus of the Overseas Ministries Study overseas as a Protestant missionary, but before this time, persons Center, New Haven, Connecticut. with medical training were sent abroad as part of the general —[email protected] missionary effort to meet human needs and to care for their fel- low missionaries. They were not designated as a special category and did not spend the majority of their time in medical work among the indigenous population. Whether or not he was the 152 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 37, No. 3 first Protestant medical missionary, “Peter Parker was clearly the Parker’s reputation as a skilled medical practitioner spread first Protestant medical missionary to go to China, and the key quickly and led to rapid growth of the hospital at Canton. To figure out of whose sustained work China’s mission hospitals, provide greater financial support for the hospital and to expand lay clinics, and medical schools chiefly derived,” according to the work of medical missions, Parker and others held a public Edward Gulick.6 meeting in Canton on February 21, 1837, to establish “The Medical Parker, at thirty years of age, arrived at Canton on October Missionary Society in China,” with the intent to encourage the 26, 1834, after a journey of 144 days. In Canton he was greeted practice of medicine among the Chinese. Parker was elected one by three other American missionaries: Elijah Coleman Bridgman, of the vice-presidents, and later became the president. the first American missionary to China, who had arrived in 1830; Thus in less than four years after his arrival in Canton, Samuel Wells Williams, who arrived in Canton in 1833; and Edwin Parker had been instrumental in three significant initiatives: the Stevens, a friend from Yale who had arrived in Canton in 1832. founding of the first hospital in China, the beginning of train- As soon as he got settled, Parker happily began working ing students for the practice of Western medicine in China, and on the language and observing local the formation of the Medical Missionary customs in the small waterfront area Society in China. of Canton to which Westerners were Following his voyage on an ill-fated restricted. In December 1834, after a expedition to enter Japan in August 1837, visit and advice from Karl Gützlaff, which ended when their ship was attacked the imposing pioneer German mission- by the Japanese and they barely escaped, ary, Parker left Canton for Singapore, Parker apparently suffered a nervous where there was greater freedom of breakdown from the stress of the events. movement and contact with Chinese, to Remarkably, he recovered and resumed study the language for a few months. his work.12 Once there, however, he soon “opened In July 1840, with the outbreak of the a dispensary for Chinese where more First Opium War between Britain and than one thousand patients were treated China, during which the port of Canton from January to August 1835,” which was blockaded and all foreigners were hindered his progress in language study ordered to leave, Parker reluctantly closed but provided an initial opportunity to the Canton hospital and departed for practice medicine.7 America after nearly six years in China. Already he was troubled by the It marked the end of the first phase of his tension of roles to which he had been career in China. assigned—between evangelism and healing—as seen in this journal entry Home Again for March 5, 1835: “I read last evening my instructions from the Board¸ and not Arriving in the United States in Decem- without grief to find that, in the deep- Peter Parker, M.D. ber 1840, Parker discovered that he was growing interest I have felt for the sick famous, as he received many invitations and dying among the Chinese, I have in a degree deviated from to speak in churches and to visit various dignitaries. After visits those instructions, . and have become involved in medical and with his family, and in New Haven, where he was hosted by surgical practice in a manner that I know not how to extricate the president of Yale, and with the American Board in Boston, myself.”8 The tension would never really be resolved for him. where he reported to Rufus Anderson, he went to Washington, Parker returned to Canton in September 1835, where “he D.C., in January 1841.