AN IMPORTANT ALBUM OF THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONARY PHYSICIAN, JOSEPH PLUMB COCHRAN'S PHOTOGRAPHS OF PERSIA
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE ENGLISH BIBLIOPHILE
Mostly Urmia, West Azerbaijan, Qajar Iran, circa 1880 - 1900

Comprising 151 small format photographs in various sizes, mostly albumen prints in black and white, some hand-coloured, a few landscape cards possibly photomechanical, 5 images in colour photogravure, 3 images with dates, and 3 images with Joseph Plumb Cochran’s signature, mounted in a modern brown leather album, each snapshot presenting a variety of topographic and ethnographic subjects including various landscape sceneries, buildings and memorable monuments mostly located in North-Western Iran and Kurdistan; as well as late 19th-century American missionaries in Persia like resident staff, their families and also temporary visitors; students from the missionary school and the modern medical school established by Cochran, Westminster College (1879–1915), the first of its kind in Iran; mission buildings and facilities; Nestorian and Jewish religious leaders, and members of autochthonous Persian communities; and souvenirs of special occasions such as weddings and religious processions and celebrations; many photographs taken by Cochran himself during his travels in Iran, pasted down onto paper support with manuscript titles and descriptive notes indicating location, subject matter, and names, the album 31cm x 30.5cm, the largest photograph 13.3cm x 10cm.

Provenance: Originally belonging to Joseph Plumb Cochran, then by descent to Joseph Cochran Jr., Dorothy Cochran Romson, and Joseph L. Romson. Purchased by the present owner directly from Joseph L. Romson, 2010

Joseph Plumb Cochran (14 January 1855 – 18 August 1905), an American Presbyterian missionary and medical doctor, is known as the founder of the first modern medical school in Iran. Born in an American missionary family in Urmia, home of the Assyrian Church of the East (or Nestorians), in the province of Western Azerbaijan, Qajar Iran, Cochran decided to move to America in 1868 to study medicine, financially supported and assisted by the family of Stephen Mallory Clement (1825 – 1892). In 1876, Cochran graduated from the New York Medical School, and after two years of practical hospital work in surgery, infectious diseases, and gynecology, he was assigned as a missionary physician to Persia and returned to Urmia with his wife, Katherine Talcott Hale.

Proficient in all the local languages of the region (Persian, Azeri, Kurdish, and Assyrian) and devoted to introducing positive improvements and innovation to the area, he purchased a 15-acre lot of land in 1878 and decided to build there a modern 100-bed hospital (Westminster Hospital, completed in 1882), as well as missionary residences. The establishment of a hospital in the area required the presence of locally-available trained physicians and medical professionals, a problem that Cochran resolved by establishing the very first modern medical school of Iran, Westminster College, now known as Urmia Medical School, part of the Urmia University. Cochran became the institution's first director and spent the following twenty-seven years in this profession, enabling 26 medical students to graduate from this school. Archival documents in Urmia testify that in the graduation ceremony of 1898 (1277 AH), Joseph Plumb Cochran and Muzaffar al-Din Shah Qajar, the Shah of Persia at that time, both signed and handed out the certificates to the graduating students, showing not only how far Cochran had personally come, but also how strong and mutually beneficial the links between America and Iran used to be.

For further reference, please see Esmail Yourdshahian, Farrokh Ghavam, Mohamad-Hassan Ansari, Life of Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran, Founder of Iran's First Contemporary Medical College, Archives of Iranian Medicine, Academy of Medical Sciences, Islamic Republic of Iran, Vol. 5, No. 2 (April 2002); Siamak Sheikhi, Kazhal Mobaraki, Jamal Ahmadzadeh et all., "In Honor of Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran, the Founder of the First Modern Iranian Medical School" in the Journal of Research on History of Medicine, Vol. 9, Issue 3, August 2020, pp. 179-188; and Hooman Estelami, The Americans of Urumia: Iran's First Americans and their Mission to the Assyrian Christians, 2021.