In the Turkish empire a remarkable impetus has been given
to the material development of Asia Minor and Syria, which
may be largely traced to the quickening influences of
American missions. Mission converts are proverbially men
of affairs, alert and progressive, and in full sympathy
with modern ideals of progress. The change in their
personal environment, and in the temper and spirit of
their lives, testifies to new impulses, higher ambitions,
and an enlarged and increasing sympathy with modern
progress. As long ago as 1881, an incident of commercial
significance was reported in The Missionary Herald. It was
announced that through missionaries at Harpoot nearly five
hundred sets of irons for fanning-mills had been ordered
from the United States, native carpenters having been
taught to make the necessary woodwork which would render
them available. Since then the introduction of American
agricultural machines has increased, in spite of the
difficulties and heavy cost of transportation. The German
government has interested itself in securing concessions
for a railway through Asia Minor to Bagdad and Busrah,
with the evident expectation that German trade will find
in those regions a profitable field of exploitation.
If it should prove true that Mesopotamia may become a
source of supply for the grain which Europe needs, there
is good reason to expect that American agricultural
implements will find a new market in Asiatic Turkey.
Owing to the large emigration of Armenians to the United
States, and the long residence of American missionaries
in Turkey, no foreign country is better known or more
admiringly regarded by the entire Christian element of
Armenia than the United States. Mr. Charles M. Dickinson,
Consul-General of the United States at Constantinople,
regards even the material returns of American mission work
in Turkey as justifying in large measure the outlay. His
opinion is expressed in the following paragraph:
“In all our efforts to extend American commerce, in the
hard struggle to establish and maintain direct steam
communication with New York, the opening of American
expositions and agencies, and the introduction of new
articles of manufacture, many of the missionaries have
been willing pioneers, blazing the way for American
exporters, and doing valuable introductory work through
their knowledge of the local languages and their influence
with the people. From every standpoint, therefore, I do
not see how the American missions in Turkey, as they
are at present conducted, can fail to be of distinct
advantage to the commerce and influence of the United
States.”
—JAMES S. DENNIS, in
“Christian Missions and Social Progress.”
There was no purpose or plan at the beginning of missionary work
in Turkey to make special use of the physician. Whenever a man was
appointed as missionary who had taken a full course of medicine he was
not sent out especially as a medical missionary, but went as did the
others, with the understanding that he was an evangelistic missionary
and was to use his medical skill as an auxiliary force. The outfit of
the early medical missionaries, like Dr. Grant and Dr. Asa Dodge of
Syria, was exceedingly circumscribed, consisting of a few standard
remedies and simple instruments and appliances. There was no suggestion
of a hospital or even a public dispensary. The medical missionary was
able to transport the major part of his equipment upon a horse and
apply his art at any point along the way. After the days of pioneering
were passed and the various mission stations were well established, the
medical missionaries began to prepare for a broader and more thorough
work.
The country had no modern physicians when the Board began work there
and no schools for medicine. The people submitted to the most loathsome
and cruel methods of treatment at the hands of heartless old women and
unskilled men who traded upon their sufferings. From the beginning
the fullest confidence was placed in the American physician. He was
deemed by the ignorant and needy masses as little less than a worker
of miracles. His reputation gave not only himself but his missionary
associates standing among all classes in the country. His presence
often proved in times of stress to be a large element of safety for
all members of the station. The Turkish officer and persecuting
ecclesiast did not care to injure the man into whose hands their lives
might soon be placed by disease or accident. They thought it good
policy to keep on fairly good terms with the doctor.
Medical work in the empire took its earliest and strongest hold upon
Beirut and Aintab. In the former place a hospital was erected and a
medical school was in operation in the ’70’s. Aintab took the same step
ten years later, but finally, for want of funds, gave up the medical
school but continued the hospital. The next mission hospital to be
erected was at Mardin. Until the last decade these constituted the main
mission hospitals in the empire. Hospitals have followed at Cæsarea,
Marsovan, and Van, while others are contemplated at Harpoot, Sivas,
Erzerum, Adana, Constantinople, and elsewhere.
Many Greeks and Armenians have qualified themselves for medical
practise in Turkey by taking a course of training either in the
medical department of the Syrian Protestant College at Beirut or the
medical schools in Europe or the United States. The laws of Turkey
are so stringent in regard to the practise of medicine, or rather so
oppressive, that it is almost impossible for a subject of Turkey to win
great success in it. The law permits the arrest and imprisonment of a
physician upon the complaint of any one that he did not correctly treat
a case which ended fatally. When once he has been imprisoned it costs
a round sum to secure release. This process repeated destroys practise
and eats up profits. Many a well-trained Armenian doctor has been
compelled to give up the effort and return to the United States. There
are several Armenian physicians enjoying a good and honorable practise
in this country. The foreign physician enjoys the extra territorial
privileges of his country and, although often annoyed, is not seriously
disturbed by restrictive measures. He practises under a license granted
by an official medical board at Constantinople.
Medical missions in Turkey have opened the eyes of all classes to the
value of scientific medical practise. Were it not for the restrictive
measures of local officials, every town of considerable size in the
country might now have its native physicians, the most of whom were
trained in Christian schools. Until that time arrives the American
missionary physician will have large place in the life of the country.
His importance there is due to this fact, and also because of the
confidence reposed in him by the higher Turkish officials. They regard
the work of the medical missionary as supremely Christian. It commands
their admiration. Not a little of the hold which the missionaries now
have upon the country is due to his presence and work. In imitation of
the missionaries, the Turks themselves have attempted, at different
places, to maintain hospitals of their own for the care of soldiers
and officers, but these have usually been of little value unless the
physician in charge was a European or a man trained by the missions.
Medical work in Turkey is probably nearer self-support than that of any
other missionary country except Japan. The people are willing so far as
able to pay for medicines received and for services rendered. Wealthy
officials often make a handsome present to the missionary physician
treating them, thus making it possible to treat many poor without pay.
The hospital at Mardin, for instance, receives in fees and in payment
for medicines enough to meet all expenses except the salary of the
American physician in charge. The hospital of Aintab receives little
money from the Board.
Medical missions in Turkey are less hampered by officialism and
hindered by opposition than any other form of missionary work.
Physicians are more generally welcomed and their benefits more
widely appreciated than anything else the missionaries do. While the
other departments cannot be and ought not to be curtailed, much less
abandoned, in view of all the conditions that prevail there with the
constant scourges of pestilential diseases and the recurrence of
violence and massacre in different parts of the country, there is
an unlimited field for the operations of the Christian missionary
physician who commends the gospel which he preaches to all with whom he
comes in contact. At the same time, this work, compared with the extent
of its influence, costs perhaps less than any other form of purely
missionary service.
Missionary physicians, their medical schools, hospitals, dispensaries,
and practise among the people have been a mighty force not only for
alleviating suffering, but for breaking down the superstitions of
all classes of people. The Arabs, the Koords, the Turks, as well as
other Mohammedan races, have found their belief in _kismet_, or fate,
greatly shaken by the practises of men who seemed successfully to set
themselves against the will of God. They have seen the scourge of
cholera stayed in its ravages by the application of modern scientific
methods, and diseases which were regarded as almost universally fatal
become little feared, and they are compelled to inquire if, after all,
“whatever is, is ordained by Allah.” Perhaps the medical work of the
missionaries in Turkey has accomplished more in breaking down that
benumbing belief in fatalism among the Mohammedans than all other
phases of mission work together.