The American physician and public health official William Hallock Park (1863-1939) was the first to systematically apply bacteriology to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of the common infectious diseases.

William Hallock Park was born on Dec. 13, 1863, in New York City. He entered the College of the City of New York in 1878. Graduating in 1883, he entered the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons and received his medical degree in 1886. After serving at Roosevelt Hospital for a few years, he went to Europe in 1889 to study otolaryngology. On his return to the United States he practiced in this field during the next 2 years at Bellevue Hospital, Vanderbilt Clinic of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Roosevelt Hospital, and the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital. While engaged in this work, Park was also developing an interest in the new science of bacteriology, which gradually became of principal importance to him...