and interpreter to the new embassy from the United States, still keeping the hospital in operation. In the absence of the minister, Parker acted as chargé d'affaires. In 1855, finding his health seriously impaired, he again returned to the United States. The 1844 treaty stipulated that it could be renegotiated after 12 years, and in 1856, president Franklin Pierce sent Parker to China in order to revise the treaty and gain more concessions from the Qing Empire. Parker was unsuccessful in this endeavor. He worked in this capacity until Pierce left office. In 1857, his health again failing, he returned to the United States. Lam Qua portraits While in China, Parker met Lam Qua, a Western-trained Chinese painter. Parker commissioned Lam Qua to paint patients at the Canton Hospital with large tumors or other major deformities. Some of the paintings are part of a collection of Lam Qua's work held by the Peter Parker Collection at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University. Parker left these portraits to the Pathology Department of the Yale Medical School, which later gave them to the library. United States After his final return to the United States, Parker and Harriet had one son, Peter Parker Jr., in 1859. In the 1860s, the couple moved to the townhome on Lafayette Square that is known today as the Peter Parker House. From here the couple regularly hosted notable figures in Washington, including Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, and President Abraham Lincoln. Parker became a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1868, a corporate member of the American Board in 1871, and was a delegate of the Evangelical Alliance to Russia the same year to memorialize Tsar Alexander II in behalf of religious liberty in the Baltic provinces. He was president of the Washington branch of the Evangelical Alliance in 1887. He died on January 10, 1888, in Washington, D.C. Writings Among his publications were: Reports of the Ophthalmic Hospital at Canton (Canton, 1836–52) Journal of an Expedition from Singapore to Japan, an account of his visit to the Loo Choo islands and Japan in 1837 (London, 1838) A Statement Respecting Hospitals in China (London, 1841) Notes of Surgical Practice Among the Chinese (1846) Eulogy on Henry Wilson (Washington, D. C., 1880) References Further reading George B. Stevens and W. Fisher Markwick. The Life, Letters, and Journals of the Rev. and Hon. Peter