Deceased Distinguished Citizens of Buffalo [chapter 34]

     Dr. Roswell Park was born at Pomfret, Connecticut, May 4, 1852. His father was the Rev. Roswell Park, D. D., and his mother was Mary Brewster Baldwin. Both parents were of New England parentage. Roswell Park was graduated from Racine College in 1872 with the degree of A. B., and in 1875 he received the degree M. A. from the same college. He received his degree of M. D. from Northwestern University in 1876, and became an interne and house physician at the Cook County (Illinois) Hospital. In 1879 he was made demonstrator of anatomy in the Women’s Medical College of Chicago, and the following year became adjunct professor of anatomy in the Medical Department of Northwestern University. He held that position for three years and resigned to pursue the study of anatomy and surgery in France, Germany and Austria. While in Europe he was made a lecturer on surgery in Rush Medical College and attending surgeon at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.
     In 1883 Dr. Edward M. Moore retired from the chair of surgery in the Medical Department of the University of Buffalo. Dr. Roswell Park was called to fill the vacancy, and filled that position until his death, on February 15, 1914. The Medical Department of the University of Buffalo prior thereto, then or in the year following, had in its faculty some of the following named doctors of medicine: Drs. Austin Flint, Sr. and Jr., Corydon L. Ford, Charles Alfred Lee, Charles C. Doremus, Frank H. Hamilton, R. H. Withaus, George Hedley, James P. White, Thomas F. Rochester, Julius F. Miner, Charles R. Stockton, Ernest Wende, Matthew D. Mann, Julius Pohlman, Charles Cary and others. Dr. Park came to his position strongly recommended from the medical professors of the institutions with which he had been identified. He rose rapidly in his profession and in the esteem of the medical profession and of the citizens of Buffalo and of the State. He was honored in 1895 by Harvard University with the degree of M. A., and by Yale University with the degree of LL. D. in 1902. He was president of the New York State Medical Society for 1895-96. His fame as a surgeon won for him membership in the Society of Surgery of France, the German Congress of Surgeons, the Italian Surgical Society, and in other foreign medical associations. His contributions to medical literature comprise a “Treatise on Surgery by [907][908] American Authors,” “The Principles and Practice of Modern Surgery,” “The Mutter Lectures on Surgical Pathology,” “An Epitome of the History of Medicine,” and one hundred and fifty or more articles on surgical or medical subjects, and an occasional one on some literary subject. He was the chief sponsor for the Buffalo Cancer Laboratory, which ultimately became the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Disease, on High street. Dr. Park left other monuments to his memory, recorded elsewhere in this history. He was favorably known in the medical circles of Europe as well as of America. He was a scholarly, accomplished and charming gentleman, whose loss was widely deplored. He married Miss Martha P. Durkee, of Chicago, on June 1, 1882, and she died in 1899. His only children, Roswell and Julian, survived him.