'Henry Park'

Accession number WAG9841

Henry Park, one of Liverpool’s notable medical men, entered the Liverpool Infirmary as a fourteen year old apprentice in 1758 or 1759. After completing his training in London and France he returned to his native town and was appointed surgeon to the Infirmary at the age of 22.

He held the post until 1798 and lived for many years at a house he built for himself in Bold Street. He is celebrated chiefly for pioneering an operation by which diseased knee and elbow joints could be cut out and the bones rejoined, avoiding the need for amputation. His account of the process was published in 1783 and translated into French and Italian, and the operation was later described as one of the greatest surgical triumphs of the time.

Park assembled an important medical library which eventually came to be housed in the Medical Institution at the corner of Hope Street and Mount Pleasant.

The inverted torches on each side of the inscription are symbols of Death, derived from classical tomb sculpture.