PARKS, ISAAC N. – Biographies – History of Homeopathy

ARKS, ISAAC N., M. D., of Coruna, Mich., was born in Wilkesbarre, Pa., October 16th, 1840. He was the
son of Rev. Isaac Parks, D. D., of Whitehall, New York, who for forty years filled honorable positions in the M. E. Church, of which he was a member. He
was twice elected a member of the General Conference, and received the degree of D. D. from the Middletown University. In 1852, he was elected to the
Legislature of New York, but did not serve ; the same year he was appointed Regent of the University of the State of New York, which position he
retained till his death.

     Dr. Parks’ literary education was commenced at the Utica Free Academy, and finished at the Fairfield
Seminary in the State of New York. After leaving Fairfield, he was urged to attend the Union College of Schenectady, but being weary with boarding
school life, and having entered into an agreement with four of his associates, who had been his companions for five years at the seminary, to meet at
Albany in the month of August, 1860, and prosecute the study of law, he peremptorily refused to follow any other than the course marked out by himself.
Arriving in Albany the last of August, 1860, he found his four chums ensconced at the hotel, and studying medicine at the Albany Medical College ;
they had a stormy meeting, and the whole course of his future life was changed ; argument and debate on his part accomplished nothing, and he was
compelled to yield, and, using his own language, “take his daily dose of medicine for the next three years.” He graduated., in 1863, and was
immediately married to Miss T. G. Barnes, niece of the Hon. J. F. Benjamin, and went to Missouri, where he was appointed Deputy Prevost Marshall, but
remained only a short time. In the fall of 1863, he commenced the practice of his profession in the city of Chicago, where he remained eighteen months,
and then returned to the State of New York. In 1866, he assumed the practice of Dr. Henry Ladd, an old practitioner in Seneca county, O. Here his
attention was first directed to the science of homœopathy by Dr. W. H. Storer, a professional friend of his. Dysentery was the prevailing disease of
the year, and homœopathists alone were successful in its treatment. He inquired of the doctor as to the forms of their dilutions, tried a few of the
remedies given him, then investigated homœopathy as a science, and, in 1869, unfurled the banner of homœopathy for himself, and with the banner of
light for his guide will ever defy ignorance and superstition.

     His father dying suddenly, he returned to New York, where he remained till 1870, when he came to
Coruna, Mich. He had scarcely established himself in the practice before he was called to fill the chair of Anatomy in the Lansing Homœopathic College,
the first college of the kind ever established in the State of Michigan. This position he filled until the close of the session, when the pressure of
business at home compelled him to resign. He now occupies the position of Physician and Surgeon of the Coruna Coal Mines, this with his daily practice
leaves hardly any time for literary culture.

Source : Cleave’s Biographical Cyclopædia of Homœopathic Physicians and Surgeons By
Egbert Cleave