LIFE OF DR. JOSEPH PLUMB COCHRAN, FOUNDER OF IRAN’S FIRST CONTEMPORARY MEDICAL COLLEGE

This sentence, taken from the Holy Bible, is engraved on a tombstone in the Assyrian Missionary Cemetery located on top of a hill overlooking the “Seer village” in Urmia, northwest Iran. Dr. Joseph Plumb Cochran was born on January 14, 1855 and died on August 18, 1905 in Urmia. His father, the Reverend Joseph J. Cochran, and his mother, Deborah Plum, traveled to Iran in 1848 as first-generation American missionaries. They settled in a part of the country that was the homeland of one of the most ancient cultures, Urartu, as well as one of the earliest Christian sects, the Assyrian Church. Very little evidence was to be seen of the region’s rich cultural heritage,but the Cochrans decided to devote their full missionary zeal to the benefit of the local people, many of whom had remained devout Christians. Young Joseph, one of eight children, had a happy childhood growing up in a close community of friends, and came to learn local Assyrian, Turkish, Kurdish, English and Persian languages. He left for the USA as a teenager in 1868, visiting American relatives and entering New York Medical College, from which he graduated in 1876 There followed two more years of practical hospital work in surgery, infectious diseases and gynecology. During a trip to Minnesota, he met his future wife, Katharine Hale. The young couple returned to Urmia in 1878 to begin the active life of a missionary doctor and wife.