Journal of - International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine

The American Hospital in Gaziantep, The History of the Connected Medical
School and Nursing School and Their Effects on Their Enviroment
Gülkızılca YÜRÜR
trict categories, there were mission stations such as the ones
in Trabzon, Bursa, Antep, Harput or Marash. The Antep station
was connected to the Central Turkey Mission.
Besides work in the field of health care and education,
the ABCFM opened up orphanages in Antep, Maraş,
Bursa and Harput and run printing houses in Malta, İzmir,
İstanbul, Beirut and Antep. The missionary printing house
in Antep was the only one in the city since 1915 and even
non-missionary material, all kinds of magazines, journals
and books were also published here (6). The Central Turkey
mission was the fastest growing one in the Ottoman Empire.
The stations in Antakya, Tarsus, Adana, Antep, Maraş,
Urfa and Halep were connected to it.
Antep had the biggest Protestant community in the entire
Empire. It housed the Central Turkey College, which
had a medical department (1878-1888) and is still housing
the American Hospital (7). One of the 2 remaining medical
institutions founded by the ABCFM missionaries is in Istanbul,
and the other one is in Antep. Furthermore, while the
American Hospital in Istanbul is overtaken by a profit-oriented,
private company, the one in Antep, founded in 1880,
is still run by a philanthropic foundation. It is possible to say
that the only enduring medical institution founded by the
ABCFM missionaries is the American hospital in Antep.
The Protestant missionaries could establish a big and
strong community in Antep and contributed greatly to the
adjustment of city life to the needs of the industrial age,
playing a part in integrating the commercial life there to
the global market. Their services in the field of health care
and education were the main means to this end. The geographical
and historical position of the city within the webs
of transportation and production, its demographical constitution
and personal traits, individual accomplishments
of the missionaries working in Antep were decisive in the
enduring character of change they contributed to. In this
article, the medical department of the Central Turkey College,
the Antep American Hospital and the later established
school of nursing are being presented, in order to take a
closer look at the medical missionary work in Antep. The
outstanding characters running those institutions and their
work in the field of healthcare will be discussed, with an eye
on their interaction with the city.
The Missionary Doctors in Antep
Faruk Taşkın states that, following Istanbul, Antep was
the second city where the ABCFM missionaries organized
insititutionalized work (8), already in 1848 (9). Rahmi
Doğanay narrates that in 1844, the Nasturian mission was
dissolved, from where the missionaries were commissioned
to other stations. During this relocation, Thomas Laurie
and Dr. Azariah Smith were sent to Antep, and together
with a few number of local, already converted Armenians,
they started the core of their community (9). Dr. Bülent Çukurova
notes that the first ABCFM missionary to come to
Antep was Dr. Thomas P. Johnson. Due to a strong negative
reaction from the local Gregorian Armenian community,
Dr. Johnson had to leave the city after a very short visit. He
was followed by Dr. Azariah Smith, and between 1852-53,
Dr.Henry Lobdell, between 1853-1857, Dr. Andrew Pratt
and Dr. Henry Lee Norris, who came in 1874 and left in
1879. Those doctors were not only providing health care
services, but also, spreading the protestant word around
and preaching the Gospel (10).
In 1880, the medical department of the Central Turkey
College in Antep was established and started education.
In the same year, Dr. Cyrus Stevens arrived in Antep
and served as the missionary doctor, and as teaching
professor of surgery and obstetrics (11). Dr. Myron Davis,
who was sent from Kayseri to support him, turned out to
be a morphine addict and was called back from duty in
1881(12). Dr. Sewny, an Armenian from Sivas who was
by then still studying at the American Medical School in
Beirut, served for a short while in Antep, but resigned
in 1880 (12). Roughly said, during the second half of the
19th century, the ABCFM founded institutions of modern
medicine in Antep, but judging from the speedy exchange
of staff, this first period of seeding seems to have come
with difficulties.
Dr. Cyrus Stevens, who came to Antep in 1882 and
who served at the hospital and at the medical department
together with Dr. Fred Douglas Shepard, quit the work of
a missionary doctor in 1884 and returned to the USA, to
work at the New York Medical School and at the school’s
hospital (13). Dr. Robert Neal, who was married to Dr.
Shepard’s wife’s sister kızkardeşi Florence, came to Antep
in 1884 with his wife, but died in the same year of diphteria
(12). After also the Schottish nurse, Stewart Walker-Arnott,
died of diphteria in 1884, the staff of both the medical department
and the hospital weakened strongly.
Dr. Fred Douglas Shepard and Dr. Fanny Shepard arrived
in Antep in October, 1882. The couple played a decisive
role in the acceptance of the hospital in the city and
the short-lived, but well-maintained history of the medical
department. While Dr. Shepard was famous for reaching
far-out villages on horse back and investing what he earned
from wealthy patients in Halep in the needs of the medical
department, Fanny Shepard visited women patients in their
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