The Peter Parker Collection of Lam Qua ‘Tumor’ Bizarre Paintings

Peter Parker, a medical missionary and diplomat, was born in 1804 in Framingham, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College in 1831, earned an M.D. from Yale, and became the first Protestant medical missionary to China.

Parker specialized in treating eye diseases and introduced anesthesia to China. He commissioned Western-style portraits by Lam Qua of patients with tumors or deformities at the Canton Hospital. These portraits are now housed at the Medical Historical Library at Yale University. There are 80 digitized portraits, with a total of 86 in Yale’s collection. The sitters in many of the portraits remain unidentified.

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