W.A. PARKER

THE Medical Superintendent of Gartloch Asylum is descended of a family long connected with Glasgow. His father was a chartered accountant in the city, and his grandfather was Dean of Guild of the old burgh of Calton. He was born in December, 1865, at Polmadie House, near Rutherglen, and began his education at the High School of Glasgow. He studied both in arts and Medicine at Glasgow University, and graduated M.B., C.M. in 1889. After spending some years in acquiring experience in the general practice of medicine and surgery, and occupying the posts of House Surgeon in the Western Infirmary, Resident Clinical Clerk at Gartnavel Asylum, and Assistant Physician to Belvidere Fever Hospital, he took up the subject of mental diseases as his specialty. In 1894 he was appointed Pathologist to the large county asylum at Lancaster, and in the following year became junior Assistant Physician in the Glasgow Royal Asylum, Gartnavel. Thence, in 1897, he was appointed Senior Assistant Physician at Gartloch Asylum, Gartcosh. Four years later, on the retiral of Dr. Yellowlees from the Superintendentship of Gartnavel, Dr. Oswald, then Superintendent, of Gartloch Asylum, was transferred to the post, and was succeeded at Gartloch by Dr. Parker.

    The improvement of the conditions under which asylum nurses work and are trained, and the assimilation of asylum methods to the most enlightened hospital methods, have been movements into which Dr. Parker has thrown himself heartily, and his success may be judged from one of the reports on Gartloch by Dr. John Macpherson, Commissioner of Lunacy:- "It is not often, if at all, that a more admirable adaptation of modern hospital ideas to the care and treatment of the insane is presented than in the hospital section of this asylum."

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