Joseph Cochran
Encyclopedia
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
(January 14, 1855, Urmia
Urmia
- Demographics :According to official census of 2006, the population of Urmia is about 871,204.- Language :The population of Urmia is mainly Azerbaijani people, with Kurdish, Assyrian Christian, and Armenian minorities...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
– August 18, 1905, Urmia
Urmia
- Demographics :According to official census of 2006, the population of Urmia is about 871,204.- Language :The population of Urmia is mainly Azerbaijani people, with Kurdish, Assyrian Christian, and Armenian minorities...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
), was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Presbyterian missionary. He is credited as the founding father of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
’s first modern Medical School
Medical college
A Medical College is a trade association that brings together practitioners of a particular geographical area . In common law countries often are grouped by medical specialties ....
.
Joseph Cochran's father, the Reverend Joseph J. Cochran, and his mother, Deborah Plum, were first-generation American missionaries who travelled to Iran in 1848. They settled in Urmia, Western Azarbaijan, Iran, home to the people of the ancient culture of Urartu
Urartu
Urartu , corresponding to Ararat or Kingdom of Van was an Iron Age kingdom centered around Lake Van in the Armenian Highland....
and of one of the earliest Christian churches, the Assyrian Church of the East
Assyrian Church of the East
The Assyrian Church of the East, officially the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East ʻIttā Qaddishtā w-Shlikhāitā Qattoliqi d-Madnĕkhā d-Āturāyē), is a Syriac Church historically centered in Mesopotamia. It is one of the churches that claim continuity with the historical...
. The family devoted their missionary zeal to the well-being of the local population, many of whom were devout Christians.
The young Joseph was one of the eight children of Cochran's family. He had an happy childhood in the company of his large family and friends. He learnt the local Assyrian
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
, Azerbaijani and Kurdish
Kurdish language
Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....
, in addition to English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
. He left for America as a teenager in 1868, staying there with family's relatives. He studied medicine at New York Medical College
New York Medical College
New York Medical College, aka New York Med or NYMC, is a private graduate health sciences university based in Westchester County, New York, a suburb of New York City and a part of the New York Metropolitan Area...
, from where he graduated in 1876. Subsequently he did two years of practical hospital work in surgery
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
, infectious diseases and gynecology. During a travel to Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
he met his future wife, Katherine Hale.
The young couple went to Iran in 1878. Upon their arrival in Urmia they surveyed the medical and health needs of the community and found the existing small health clinic, which was working under the auspices of the Iranian Red Lion and Sun Society
Red Lion and Sun Society
The Red Lion and Sun Society of Iran was established in 1922 and admitted to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in 1923...
, inadequate. On Joseph's earnest request, the Board of Assyrian Missionary purchased a 15-hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
garden which was soon to become the site of a 100-bed hospital, named Westminster Hospital. The building of this hospital was completed within one year from its original planning and the hospital opened its doors in 1879.
Cochran resolved the problem of shortage in the local medical professionals by establishing a modern Medical School, the first of its kind in Iran. For this purpose he erected a wooden building, which included a research laboratory, near the hospital, where the future medical personnel were to be trained. Remarkably, this original wooden building, near the present-day Urmia Medical School, is still intact. An adjoining maternity hospital was built later, for which the required medical equipment arrived from America.
According to the information provided by the official website of Urmia University
Urmia University
Urmia University , is a major university in the city of Urmia the Capital of West Azarbaijan province of Iran....
, Joseph Cochran has been [the first] director of the Medical School in Urmia, established in 1878. In the course of Cochran's 27 years of directorship, 26 medical students graduated from this School. This School was closed on Joseph Cochran's death in 1905 and remained in this state until sixty years later when it was opened as one of several Schools of Urmia University. The historical archives of Urmia University is in the possession of documents that show that Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar and Joseph Cochran have personally signed and handed certificates to graduating students during the graduation ceremony of 1898 (1277 AH
Iranian calendar
The Iranian calendars or sometimes called Persian calendars are a succession of calendars invented or used for over two millennia in Greater Iran...
).
During the above-mentioned period, Joseph Cochran was joined by other American medical doctors, including Dr Wright, Dr Homlz, Dr van Norden, and Dr Miller, who remained permanently in Iran. Their resting places are in Urmia.
Joseph Cochran died in Urmia at the age of 50, on 18 August 1905, on the second floor of his wooden house in the Medical School. His death was mourned by many. According to reports, his funeral was attended by more than 10,000 mourners. He was buried in the Assyrian Missionary Cemetery located on the side of Seer Mountain in Urmia facing his wooden house, close to the resting places of his wife Catherine and her parents. His epitaph reads: "He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."
His son, Joseph P. Cochran, Jr, returning to Iran in 1920, followed in his father's footsteps through his services in the American Mission Hospital. His daughter, Dorothy Cochran-Romson, served for a short time as a missionary nurse in Tabriz
Tabriz
Tabriz is the fourth largest city and one of the historical capitals of Iran and the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. Situated at an altitude of 1,350 meters at the junction of the Quri River and Aji River, it was the second largest city in Iran until the late 1960s, one of its former...
, the capital city of the East Azerbaijan Province.
See also
- U.S.-Iran relations
- History of IranHistory of IranThe history of Iran has been intertwined with the history of a larger historical region, comprising the area from the Danube River in the west to the Indus River and Jaxartes in the east and from the Caucasus, Caspian Sea, and Aral Sea in the north to the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and Egypt...
- Famous Americans in Iran