Journal of - International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine

Gülkızılca YÜRÜR
The American Hospital in Gaziantep, The History of the Connected Medical
School and Nursing School and Their Effects on Their Enviroment
homes, searched for new endemics in the Amanos Mountains
and taught medical botany at the school (12).
Short before the I. World War, Anatolia was scene to
mass movements of deportation, migration and transportation
of big army forces. Strong famines made themselves
felt after the 1890’s and Antep was shaking to its foundations
through big epidemics of cholera and typhus, and the
number of tuberculosis cases were so high that Dr. Shepard’s
life dream was to establish a senatorium and tuberculosis
hospital in Antep (14). The swift success of a number of
simple medications in cases of cholera and typhus, and the
missionary doctors’ effective surgical intervention in cataract
cases and success in trahoma cases, made them sought
for in Antep, where eye diseases were very common. Dr.
Shepard, according to the memories of his daughter, run
around with a bottle of chloroform in his pocket, usually
performed an operation in one of the big houses of the city
before lunch, and in the time between lunch and dinner,
performed at least 8 other operations in the hospital, besides
running his rounds in the wards and receiving outdoor
patients (15).
There were cases where he also had to cure his students
in the medical school, where he lectured daily. In one example,
students rushed in during class and reported that
one of their class mates took an overdose in opium. Dr.
Shepard urged the physics teacher Dr. Bezciyan to produce
some pure oxygen, and so, brought his student back to life
(14).
During the 33 years he served in the hospital and at the
medical department, Dr. Shepard traveled on horseback all
the surrounding villages of Antep and Kilis, also took care
of the patients in and missionary families in Urfa, Mardin,
Diyarbakır, Adana, Mersin and Antakya (7). In 1907, in a
speech he held during an event celebrating the 25. Anniversary
of his arrival in Antep, he said: “I came here to prove
that God is love.”. He died, heart-broken of the suffering
and violence he had to witness in the war-torn and collapsing
Empire, while he was labouring among the Armenian
refugee groups being deported to Syria. An epidemic of typhus
broke out among the deported Armenian populations
and Dr. Shepard caught the disease, while taking care of the
sick, and died on December 18, 1915 (14).
Dr. Shepard’s former classmate and wife, Dr.Fanny
Shepard, also won herself a certain fame through her efforts
ranging from organising a web of lace production among
local women, to her studies in local botanics, to taking care
of female patients in and outside the hospital. Before 1886,
women were not officially permitted in hospitals, neither as
care givers, nor as patients. Until then, Fanny treated wom-
en in their homes. After 1886, a women’s ward was added
to the American Hospital and together with the midwife
Caroline Hamilton, who also trained nurses and taught at
the medical department, Fanny Shepard treated female patients
in the hospital (7).
As a solution to the big famine of 1888 in Antep and
surroundings, Fanny Shepard organised a web of local
women to produce lace at home, in accordance with the
fashion in the USA and easily marketable in Fanny’s homeland
and Europe. In time, this enterprise grew into a big
volume of trade and thousands of women produced lace
in Antep for the Western market (12). Teaching medical
botanics at the medical department, Fanny used to climb
the Amanos Mountains to the North of İskenderun each
summer, camping with her family for a couple of months
at those heights and collecting unknown specimen of local
plants (7). Fanny sent her samples to Dr. G.E. Post (1838-
1909), a professor of botanics at the Beirut American University.
Dr. Post is the author of a significant volume on the
plants of Northern Mesopotamia and Synia, and through
their cooperation, nine new endemic species were defined,
six of which carried the surname of Fanny Shepard in their
epithets.(7). According to Prof. Dr. Asuman Baytop, Fanny
Shepard is the first woman to lecture medical botanics in
Turkey and she is also the first female botanist to collect
plants and make a collection of local plants in Turkey (16).
The son of the Shepard couple, Lorrin Shepard, who
was born in Antep, studied medicine at Yale University and
after directing the American Hospital in Istanbul between
1927-1957, he taught Turkish at the Yale University after
1960 (17). Dr. Shepard’s grandson, Barclay M. Shepard, also
directed the Antep American Hospital between 1995-2001.
The Shepard family served in Turkey for three generations.
The Medical Department of the
Central Turkey College
The establishment of the medical department of the
Central Turkey College and afterwards, the Antep American
Hospital, were the first steps in introducing institutions
of modern medicine in South Anatolia. The medical
department was opened in 1878, had over 20 graduates in
12 years and closed in 1888. The 21 Armenian students,
who graduated from the department, served in Antep and
some of them in the USA, and there were some who continued
their studies in the Beirut American College (12).
When the medical department of the Central Turkey
College opened, there was already the medical department
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ISHIM 2011-2012