Joseph Plumb Cochran, Persia's medical missionary, racial mediator, Christian.

Joseph Plumb Cochran

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PERSIA’S MEDICAL MISSIONARY
RACIAL MEDIATOR, CHRISTIAN

“Who went about doing good, and healing
all . ; for Ood was with him.’’'

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By ROBERT E. SPEER, D.D.

CONTENTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR
DAILY BIBLE STUDY

I. Preparatory Years 3

Uncorruptible Youths, Daniel 3:8-30.

II. The Man at His Tasks 6

Gifts according to Grace and to Need,
Romans 12.

III. The Physician Characterized .... 15

Jehovah’s Servant a Light to the Gentiles,
Isaiah 49: 1-13.

IV. His Influence Among Men 17

“Sir, We would See Jesus,” John 12:20-33.

V. The Missionary Diplomat 20

The Ambassador of Christ, II Corinthians
5: 11-21.

VI. Death and the Mourning 24

The Cup and the Throne, Mark 10 : 35-45.

VII. Estimates of the Man and of His Work . 27

The Great Physician, Mark 5 : 21-34.

JOSEPH PLUMB COCHRAN

I. Preparatory Years

Joseph Plumb Cochran was born in the little village
of Seir in Persia, overlooking the plain of Urumia, on
January 14, 1855. His parents, Joseph Gallup Cochran
and Deborah Plumb Cochran, were missionaries to the
Nestorians. By natural inheritance he entered into
the missionary character and the missionary service.
And this inheritance, which came to him pure and
reinforced through his parents, ran far back of them.
His ancestors on his father’s side had moved from
Scotland to Londonderry, driven by the persecution
in Scotland under James, and on his mother’s side he
sprang from a French Protestant delivered from the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Out of a long ancestry
of high-minded devotion to principle, of simple and
true refinement, of energy and unselfishness, of
geniality and good feeling, of self-respect and the
respect of men, of modesty and purity, came the
future medical missionary who was to be the friend
of princes, the defender of the poor, the counsellor of
Moslem governors and of an ancient Christian Church,
the deliverer of a city and the father of a people.

From his birth in 1855 until his father’s return on
furlough in 1865, Joseph spent his life in the family
home on Mt. Seir, about six miles from the city of
Urumia. From the top of the mountain there is a
magnificent view westward to the passes into the

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valleys running up into the Turkish mountains and
northwestward over the plain of Urumia and the city
and the blue lake. In the winter the mountains were
white with snow, and wood fires must be kept up in
the little stoves which the missionaries introduced and
taught the people to use. In the spring hillside and
plain were covered with flowers, or green grass and
grain, and even in the hot summer and fall, when the
unirrigated country was barren and brown, the well-
watered plain of Urumia, with the gardens and vine-
yards and long rows of stately poplar trees, lay out
under the boy’s eyes like a great Persian carpet.

Joe’s pleasures were not numerous, but the life was
wholesome and noble, and the boy learned self-control,
dignity and courage. He knew how to handle horses
and to meet men. And in the Urumia Mission he was
taught to carry himself with self-respect and thus
win the respect of his fellows, young and old. He
knew what danger and peril were, and he saw men
and women daily exalting duty and the fear of God
above self-interest and the fear of men.

In 1870 the wife and younger children came home
to be with the older children in America. As Joseph
wrote, his father thought that it would be wrong for
him to leave with them.

When Mrs. Cochran returned to Persia in 1871, she
left Joseph behind for his education, and it was his
good fortune to be taken into the home of Mr. S. M.
Clement, Sr., where he was regarded and treated as
a son and grew up as a brother with Mr. S. M.
Clement, Jr., Yale 1882, later president of the Marine
National Bank of Buffalo, who was Dr. Cochran’s
nearest and dearest friend. When he had completed
the High School course he was nineteen, and under

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the pressure of various circumstances and the need
in Urumia, he decided to go on as quickly as possible
to a medical course. He had always been fond of
medicine. It had been his favorite amusement to play
doctor, and for years the idea of studying medicine
had been growing in him. And when his father died
in 1871, nothing was more natural in his view or in
the view of all who knew him than that he should
prepare to take his place. This had been his father’s
desire. He saw it, but from above. After the father’s
death also the native preachers of the Baranduz dis-
trict wrote to Joseph in Buffalo, urging him to return
to Persia. Joseph demanded no miraculous revelation
of duty. He was not waiting for a “missionary call,”
meanwhile intending to use his life selfishly.

In the fall of 1874 he went to Yale as a special
student, taking both scientific and medical courses,
but the urgent call from Urumia seemed to make it
necessary for him to omit everything but the necessary
medical training. On October 25 he writes to his
mother: “It is some time since I last wrote you, yet
I have you in my thoughts and prayers daily. I am
very busy indeed, giving all my time to medicine. We
have good opportunities here, there being the State
Hospital and Dispensary here. I presume I have seen
seventy or eighty surgical operations here so soon.
I enjoy very much being here with so many students —
1,031. Wednesday and Saturday mornings we have
no recitations and usually go out to the park for some
games. Then we come home in a body, singing and
carrying on generally. We have class meetings, too,
Sunday and Tuesday evenings, which are well attended
and interesting. Then of course there is the regular
hazing going on. I being a Medic and special Scientific

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have not the fate of a common Freshman! Still the
hazing, though unpleasant, is not serious.”

The second year of the course he took in the Buffalo
Medical College, and the last year, with his degree,
he took at the Bellevue Medical College in New York
City. When he had his degree in the spring of 187?',
he went back to Buffalo and stayed until October,
studying with Dr. Miner and working in his office and
in the hospitals. He studied pharmacy also and later
dentistry, in order to be able to help missionaries and
others in as many ways as possible. He did special
work, too, on the eye and spent a year in the Kings
County Hospital as house physician. He had no
money to w'aste. He says in one letter, “When you
asked for papers giving accounts of the [Downs]
case, I had no money to buy them.” He had walked
from his lodgings to and from the Medical College
while studying there, having worked out on a city
map the shortest route, three miles each way. He
kept up his attendance at church and was a member
of a Bible class, and in his hospital work he had all
that he could attend to, especially with insane patients.
All his preparations were made by the summer of
1878, and on June 10 of that year, he was appointed
a missionary to Persia by the Board of Foreign Mis-
sions of the Presbyterian Church.

II. The Man at His Tasks

He was married in August to Miss Katherine Hale
of Minneapolis, a Vassar graduate, and he and his
wife reached Urumia on December 2, 1878. His work
began at once. At Gavelan, a village on the way to
Urumia, where he and his wife spent Sunday, the

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sick thronged to him, neighboring villagers carrying
their paralytics on donkeys as if a word of his would
heal, and the day after his arrival at Urumia he began
his medical practice with the patients who had been
already brought from far and near to await his
coming. His sister wrote a fortnight after his arrival :
“Poor Joe does not have time to breathe in the city.
His dispensary is thronged. It seems as if all Urumia
had become sick just as he came.”

He knew the Syriac, the language of the Nestorians,
and the Turkish, the language of the Mohammedans,
as well as the native scholars knew them and was able
at once to resume intercourse with the people after
ten years’ absence.

The young doctor, not yet twenty-five years old,
stepped at once into intimate and influential relations
with the most powerful men of the land. His charm
of character, his dignity, his tact, and his friendliness
established him in the admiration and confidence of
the people of all classes. He was extremely careful
from the outset to conform to all the proper social
ideas of the people. He was recognized accordingly
as a Persian gentleman, and he had access as a wel-
come visitor to the highest homes, while he came, in
time, to be almost idolized by the poor, to whom he
was as courteous as to the governor or crown prince.

He realized at once the need of a hospital and with
Mr. Clement’s aid erected a simple but serviceable
building in 1880-1882. In his own letters Dr. Cochran
alluded only modestly and with restraint, as was his
way, to the difficulties which he had to overcome in
beginning his work and building the hospital.

Before he had been on the field a year a severe
famine visited Western Persia, due to two years of

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drought and to the export of grain for army supplies
during the Russo-Turkish war. Money was sent from
America and England for relief, and the chief respon-
sibility for organization and administration fell upon
the young medical missionary. The mortality among
the sufferers was very great. It was estimated that
on a single day 1,000 persons died within sight of the
mission station. Thousands were saved, however, by
the help given by the missions. A large pauper popu-
lation had been produced, and multitudes had learned
to beg, while the relief funds, so vast in Oriental
peasant eyes, had led the people to depend upon the
great beneficence of the Christians of the West and
on the possibility of further help through the mis-
sionaries in any time of need.

Dr. Cochran’s connection as a young medical mis-
sionary of twenty-five with the great Kurdish chief.
Sheikh Obeidullah, and with the invasion which he
led into Persia is more like fiction than sober mis-
sionary history. Next to the Sultan and the Sheriff
of Mecca, the Sheikh was the holiest person among
the Sunni Mohammedans. Thousands were ready to
follow him as the vicar of God. He was a descendant
of Mohammed and claimed to be of the line of the
caliphs of Bagdad. He was a man of some real
virtues of character, vigorous, just and courageous.
He had conceived the ambition of establishing an
independent Kurdistan, uniting all the Kurds under
his rule and governing them justly, after his rough
Kurdish notions, as a free state. He was, for a Kurd,
a man of wide and tolerant sympathy. He wished
to be on good terms with foreigners, and he was very
fair to the Christians. Two years later when the
Sheikh’s dream had vanished and he was a prisoner

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in Constantinople, the Sultan asked him to write a
paper describing the condition of the people in
Kurdistan. The Sheikh wrote in his paper a great
deal about the Nestorian Christians there, praising
them as the best subjects of the Sultan. The Sultan
objected to such language and three times returned
the letter for correction. Finally the Sheikh said,
“I don’t know much about politics, but I do know
something about truth telling, and this is the truth.”
In this spirit he was ruling the people of Kurdistan
with a firm hand when he invited Dr. Cochran to
come up to visit him and prescribe for him in the
spring of 1880. Dr. Cochran went, with the result
that the Sheikh conceived a great affection for him,
gave him his unreserved confidence and came to look
upon the young doctor almost as a son.

This visit to Sheikh Obeidullah and the friendship
which it established between him and Dr. Cochran had
significant results. The old Sheikh had some griev-
ances against Persia, and his ambition included the
absorption in his proposed kingdom of the Kurdish
district in Northwestern Persia. He sent his son down
to Urumia in the summer to negotiate with the local
Persian government, and the son, of course, sought
out Dr. Cochran and was entertained by him. The
political result of the son’s visit was unsatisfactory,
and in the fall the Sheikh came down with his army
in an invasion of Persia and laid siege to Urumia.
Dr. Cochran and his associates were placed in a very
difficult position. They were residents of Persia and
bound to be loyal to the Persian government. At the
same time they were friendly with the Sheikh. They
could not offend either, and yet to favor either would
arouse the suspicion and hostility of the other. The

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war raged around the city and rolled to and fro past
the mission compound, which lay between the besieg-
ing army and the city walls. In the end the Sheikh
withdrew without capturing the city, which owed its
deliverance largely to Dr. Cochran’s influence with
the Sheikh, who at the same time, though driven back,
retained undiminished his regard and affection for the
young medical missionary.

For twenty-five years Dr. Cochran carried on his
work in Urumia. Primarily, of course, he was a
medical missionary. The center of his medical work
was the hospital. A mile or two from the city of
Urumia, on the banks of the river of the same name,
the mission had purchased fifteen acres of land. Four
acres of this were enclosed, Persian fashion, by a wall
fifteen feet high. It was a beautiful garden, with
streams of water running through it. Avenues, lined
with sycamore, pear and poplar trees, divided it into
four squares and filled it with pleasant shade.

On one of these squares, wrote Dr. Cochran in one
of his reports, the hospital is built, on another the
college, and on the remaining two the residences of
the superintendent of the college and of the physi-
cians. The building is seventy-five feet by thirty-five,
faced with red brick, and two stories and a half high.
Aside from accommodations for the sick, it has drug-
rooms, operating and assistants’ rooms and store-
rooms. It has two large wards and six smaller wards.
The large wards have sixty beds, the smaller from
three to six. The beds are of straw on high wooden
bedsteads and are furnished with sheets and quilts
made in the native style, that is, of wool, with a
covering of bright calico. The windows are curtained
with gay calico ; pictures furnished by our friends

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adorn the walls, and in nearly every window are
plants. The floors are either carpeted or of brick.
The kitchen is at a short distance from the main
building, where the cooking is done in a native oven
(a large earthen jar, three feet wide by six feet deep).

The medical staff, at its fullest, consisted of Dr.
Cochran himself, a woman physician, an assistant
physician from the number of Dr. Cochran’s own
graduate pupils, the necessary native nurses and also
a class of medical students. In the hospital were
received those of every race and religion whose cases
required long and careful treatment or surgical
operations, especially those who came from a distance,
and the poor whose homes were destitute of the com-
forts needed by the sick. On two days of every week
the physicians were regularly ready to see any sick
who might come and to prescribe the remedies called
for by their diseases, but on other days the sick were
not turned away, and every day there came the pitiable
caravan of woe and pain. Indeed, it is safe to say
that Dr. Cochran never spent a day without seeing
the sick and never went into Urumia City or to any
village without being stopped by some suffering soul.
The number of sick seen by the doctor himself was
in some years not less than 10,000. The number of
in-patients in the hospital, from the beginning till
Dr. Cochran’s death, was, according to the records
kept by him, 5,783 persons. Of these more than 1,000
required surgical operations, and nearly all of these
operations were performed by his own hands, besides
other operations performed at times outside the hos-
pital. Two hundred and forty of these surgical cases
were for stone and one hundred and fifty for cataract.
Dr. Cochran’s skill as a surgeon is indicated by the

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fact that of the first one hundred and eight cases of
stone only two died, one of them from another dis-
ease two months after the operation. Of these one
hundred and eight cases, thirty-eight were Persian
Moslems and nine were Kurds ; and his patients
always included large numbers of Moslems as well
as Christians. The variety of the work done is indi-
cated by the fact that in one year the list of patients
kept in the hospital represented about seventy different
diseases. One year, besides patients kept in the hos-
pital and those who came to Dr. Cochran for treat-
ment, 1,145 visits were made to the homes of patients,
and still another year 1,208, including visits to thirty-
eight villages. Not infrequently he made visits to
Khoi and Salmas. Patients came to him from great
distances — Van, Mosul, Jezireh on the Tigris, every
part of Hakari, every city and region of Azerbaijan
and Caucasia. They included every class, but the
majority were always the neediest, the poor who lacked
the comforts that even a well man needs for his best
good and whose sufferings in sickness were multiplied
many fold.

The character of the work can be indicated best by
giving a few specific cases and incidents connected
with it. During the last year of Dr. Cochran’s life, a
patient who came to him in order to avoid a difficult
journey to Europe was His Excellency, Saad es
Saltaneh of Kazvin, a nobleman whose services had
rendered him famous throughout Persia. He was
suffering from a deadly disease (cancer) that required
a very difficult operation. The operation was entirely
successful. Another patient this same year was His
Excellency, Bahadur ul Mulk, of Sain Kulla. It is
safe to say that during the years of Dr. Cochran’s

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presence in Urumia no governor ever came to the city
without being under obligations to him for medical
services, and also without being bound to him by bonds
of love and friendship. Both H. I. M. Muzaffr-i-Din
Shah, when Vali Ahd, and his son who succeeded him,
when they were in Urumia, or when Dr. Cochran was
in Tabriz, consulted with him with reference to their
health. Many Kurds of high rank, such as Sheikh
Mohammed Sadik of Nochea, either came themselves
to the hospital for treatment or sent members of their
families. So, also, among the Christians of different
races and sects, none stood higher in honor than the
doctor. There was no more welcome guest at the
Patriarchate of the Nestorian Church in Kochanis in
the Vilayet of Van.

The hospital was administered with a conscientious
frugality almost incredible. For many years the entire
appropriation for the hospital and his other medical
work was $1,000. In later years the appropriation
grew to $1,500, but it required all his economy to
compass so great a work on so slender resources, and
he did not succeed without making personal contri-
butions that he could ill afford. He helped out by
utilizing all available drugs and herbs. Both in the
hospital and among the people he always prescribed,
if he could, remedies within the reach of the people,
and reduced to the minimum the use of expensive,
imported drugs. He knew what was obtainable and
serviceable in the country, and he taught its use. He
was clear in his conviction that it was right to make
the work, as far as possible, self-supporting.

As his hospital was the first one in Persia, so also
he was the first to send out physicians, natives of
Persia trained in Western medical science, and so to

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extend the benefits of his profession to many whom
he never himself saw. The services of these physi-
cians have been recognized by honors and titles be-
stowed on them by the Persian government, and the
governor general of the Province sometimes counter-
signed the certificates given them by Dr. Cochran.
At the time of Dr. Cochran’s death there were fifteen
pupils of his practicing in six places in Persia. One
other was practicing in Gawar in Turkey. Two of
these were Moslems, while the others were Nestorians.
Besides these, not a few others were influenced by the
example of Dr. Cochran’s work to go abroad and
there gain a medical education, the benefits of which
have come back to Persia. It has been a wonder to
those who knew Dr. Cochran that he could find time
to teach these pupils. They learned much in the
practical work of the hospital and Dr. Cochran’s
associates gave some of the lessons, but their chief
teacher — and none was more faithful — was Dr. Coch-
ran himself. He often taught in the evenings when it
was impossible to find time in the days, crowded with
demands from others. Still another way in which
Dr. Cochran was able as a physician to accomplish
much good was by the extension of the knowledge
of medicine and hygiene in the country.

Often he left the hospital and traveled about in the
villages, either in Persia or in the mountains of
Eastern Turkey, healing the sick, settling difficulties
among the people, or between them and their land-
lords, and preaching the Gospel in a simple, sincere
fashion that made his word influential with all. And
wherever he went, he was sure to find those who
from grateful love looked up to him as a man of a
higher order of men.

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III. The Physician Characterized

Dr. Cochran’s medical work was characterized by
the moral qualities of the man. He was of quick and
accurate judgment, very quiet in tone and demeanor,
but firm and decided ; ready to listen to others and
to change his decision, if reason could be shown, but
otherwise gentle and inflexible. There were certain
moral and spiritual characteristics that were essential
elements in his life. First of all may be mentioned
his perfect truthfulness. He never yielded to the
practice that is generally regarded as perfectly justi-
fiable of deceiving his patients. Once a man of dis-
tinction who was his patient said to him: “Doctor,

my friends who are near me will not tell me the truth
regarding my condition, and I cannot rely upon what
they say. What is the truth? Is my disease fatal?”
The doctor told him the truth — that he could not live
much longer — and then he urged him to prepare his
soul for the great change. And so it was with many
other patients and their friends. Never, in order to
secure an end that he had in view, did he misrepresent
the facts. Sometimes it was necessary for him to
correct statements that had been made by him to the
government or others, and he never failed to do so.
His anger was slow, but it would be kindled against
those who had led him astray. So men believed and
trusted him when they trusted no one else. Another
element of strength and power was his unselfishness.
He sought nothing for himself, but he gained the best
things that men can give — the honor, the respect, and
the love of his fellows, as well as the peace of a
conscience clear towards men and God.

The conscience which Dr. Cochran put into all his
medical work was a Christian conscience. He was no

I

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mere physician and surgeon. He was a Christian man
and a missionary. He was very generous and tolerant
in his attitude toward the practices of others, but he
was very careful and strict in all his personal ways.
In the Station he never allowed the hospital to take
precedence over forms of work which he deemed even
more vital to the development of the native church.
In a careful appeal for reinforcements and enlarge-
ment, he placed, first some ordained missionaries,
second native preachers, third intermediate and village
schools and at the end of the list additional appropria-
tions for the hospital. Another year he closes a state-
ment of his needs with the words, “I have hesitated to
ask for more than we do of the Board, lest it seem too
much in proportion to the estimate for strictly evan-
gelistic work.” He was no mere philanthropist or
healer of men’s bodies. And he might truthfully have
claimed that much of his work was strictly evangel-
istic. “Dr. Cochran is not a ‘reverend,’ ” wrote Dr.
Shedd in 1886, “but he does excellent work visiting
congregations on Sunday, and talking to them as a
layman.”

But while he was primarily a medical missionary
who practiced with extraordinary skill his profession
as a doctor and also did his duty as a messenger of
the Gospel, Dr. Cochran was unique as a missionary
peacemaker and diplomatist as well. It is doubtful
if any other missionary of modern times, outside of
Africa or the South Seas, with their primitive tribes,
has won a more interesting position in the political
life of the people than came unsought to Dr. Cochran.
Born in the country, speaking the three languages of
the people as fluently and beautifully as the people
themselves, with an intimate and sympathetic knowl-

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edge of all the races, their conditions, their customs,
their social and political relations, and with a skill at
race diagnosis which brought him into touch with
their inner life, their modes and currents of thought
and motives of action, their ideals, their prejudices,
the secret springs of their racial, social and religious
consciousness — possessing a mind of exceptional
powers of observation and receptivity, and with a
thorough practical training, he began his work at the
age of twenty-three. His work lay primarily among
the Christian people, but it reached out to the Persian
on one side, and the Kurd on the other, at whose
hands the Christian was ever subject to oppression and
outrage. The role of mediator was, in consequence,
early forced upon the American physician whose pro-
fessional skill and kindness of heart were quickly
recognized, and whose services were freely given to
all comers without distinction of station or creed.

IV. His Influence Among Men

The influence he soon gained over men of every
class was marvelous — an influence always exerted to
allay strife, to right wrong, and to promote good will
among men. The peasants looked to him as a friend
ever ready to help; he had won the respect and the
favor of the mullahs and the mujtahids, while the vil-
lage proprietors, the local rulers, and the predatory
Kurds loved and yet feared him ; for his influence
grew with the years and, in restraining injustice and
exactions, was felt in places of highest authority in
the land. It was well understood that he was both
a careful and acute observer, and an incorruptible and
fearless witness.

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The governor general of Azerbaijan at one time
asked him to assist in bringing about an interview
which he was trying to arrange with an enemy, a
noted Kurdish chief, saying that he was ready to take
an oath on the Koran to give him safe-conduct.
“But I would not trust your oath,” was the doctor’s
frank reply. “As soon as you got him in your power

you would kill him as you killed .” The

governor did not press the matter further.

I was with him once in a little village where a nest
of robbers lived. The morning we left, among those
who came to say good-bye was the head of the band.
The doctor, who was a man of slight stature, looked
him steadily in the eyes, and in his calm, even voice,
told him in the plainest terms what sort of a man he
was and what he thought of him. The Moslems
admired a man who could not be intimidated and who
was not afraid to speak truth to any man.

An old tyrannical governor, who was several times
appointed to the district of Urumia, knew how to
keep the district in order by his stern measures. A
few noses and ears lopped off and a throat or two
cut in the early months of his governorship served
as a sufficient warning to evildoers, who kept out of
the way thereafter. When the gentlemen of the
Station called on this governor, they were amused to
see the servant insert the long stem of the water pipe
into the mouth of his indolent Excellency and take
it out at the proper moment, and were startled to hear
him swear violently if the servant did not drive the
fly off his nose. Everything had to be done for him,
and when a violent attack of rheumatism laid him
low, life was not worth living for his attendants. Dr.
Cochran was in great and constant demand at this

18

juncture and had to traverse the long distance from
his hospital to the palace at least twice a day to attend
his unruly patient, whom the missionaries dubbed
“Doctor’s Baby.” Finally the patient had improved
to such an extent that the doctor ordered him out for
a drive — an order that was not heeded. One day, the
doctor being very busy with operations at the hospital
and knowing that his presence was entirely unneces-
sary, postponed his call until the latter part of the
afternoon. As he entered the large reception room,
he saw it was filled with callers — noblemen and
wealthy subjects who were paying their respects to
the governor. The doctor’s entrance was the signal
for a perfect tirade from his angry patient. “What
sort of a doctor is this who comes to see a sick man
at this time of day?” etc., with impolite interjections
to his attendants. Dr. Cochran stood calmly waiting
until the torrent of abuse had spent itself, then said
with his own equaled dignity: “I did not come

today as a physician, but to say farewell. No one is
a patient of mine who does not obey my orders, and
I understand you have not taken a drive, so I bid you
good-bye.” There was an awful silence, for no person
present had ever heard an Oriental despot addressed
in such fashion, and what the consequence might be
could not be predicted. Suddenly the governor burst
out into a hearty laugh in which all present gladly
joined, and the scene ended with a drive in the state
carriage, the doctor and the governor sitting side by
side and attended by large numbers of mounted
retainers.

He became the great character of the city and of
Western Persia. A Moslem lady of high rank in
Urumia once remarked, as he was starting away.

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“We always feel that the city is perfectly safe when
Dr. Cochran is here.” The poor looked up to Dr.
Cochran with a great and grateful awe. “I chanced
to see in the compound one day,” wrote one of the
missionaries, “a poor, ragged man reverently lifting
and kissing the skirt of the doctor’s frock coat in
which he had been calling upon the governor, while
he, oblivious of the incident, was talking to another

man. ”

People knew that he knew the truth. No man in
Persia had a better knowledge of the people than he.
“What Dr. Cochran does not know about Persia,”
said Captain Gough, the British consul at Kermanshah,
when he became acquainted with him, “is not worth
knowing.” And he knew perfectly how to deal with
Persians. No one of them was more of a Persian
gentleman than he was. As has been said, he knew
and observed the etiquette of the land and moved as
easily and quietly among the nobles and princes as
among the poor of the villages.

V. The Missionary Diplomat

The influence which Dr. Cochran possessed and the
conditions by which he was surrounded forced upon
him the question of the duty of a missionary to im-
prove civil conditions, to promote justice and to pre-
vent wrong. He was a man of righteous character
and a preacher of a righteous life. Was he not to do
justice, and to love mercy, and to see, so far as he was

able, that mercy was loved and justice done by others?
The situation in which he lived was a tangle of races
and religions, of civil and ecclesiastical laws and
institutions. It would have been bad enough with

20

only Moslems, Turks, Persians and Kurds to deal
with; but when Armenians and Jews and Nestorians
were added, with the network of precedents and com-
promises under which non-Moslems were enabled to
live under Moslem law, existence itself, not to speak
of missionary influence, depended upon the tact and
Christian diplomacy with which a man met men and
bore himself as a mediator and friend among them.
He realized how delicate and complicated the prob-
lems of his use of his civil and political influence
were, and he would have rejoiced to be free from all
his government work that he might devote himself
to his medical practice and to personal service for the
spiritual help of men, but he simply could not refuse
to do good. It is true that in trying to do good he
incurred the enmity of the Dasht Kurds. If we say
that he ought not to have done anything to help the
oppressed Christians of Tergawar, or to have stopped
disorder, we may be prescribing a course which would
also have prevented his accomplishing a work of relief
and justice which is almost unique in missionary
annals. It may be said that the missionary should
not mingle in such matters, and this is a sound prin-
ciple, but now and then a strong man will arise whose
influence in the application of Christian principle to
civil and social life simply cannot be suppressed. It
is questionable whether any man in Dr. Cochran’s
place could have been strong enough to refuse to use
his strength, and whether, if he had, he could have
retained his strength. Moreover, he was working in
a serious and complicated situation where no clear
line could be drawn between Church and State, or
religious and civil affairs, because all are one, en-
tangled inseparably. What it would be impossible

21

to do, and unwise to do if it were possible, in Japan,
he simply could not escape doing in Persia. And
even in Persia his position was seen to be unique, and
after his death no one attempted to fill his role as a
sort of unofficial Christian conscience moving upon
the tangled web of Oriental confusion and wrong.

There can be little doubt that it was the strain of
this work, in which he bore the burdens and suffered
in all the sufferings of the people, which wore out his
life. It culminated in a dreadful tragedy in 1904.
The Kurds of Dasht, a small mountain-locked plain
on the border of Persia and Turkey, had been unbear-
ably lawless in their oppression both of the Christian
and the Mohammedan villagers of the Urumia plain.
Finally a notorious outlaw, Sayid Ghafar, deliberately
shot down one of the best educated and most respected
Syrians or Nestorians of the country and a naturalized
British subject, because he would not give up his
watch on Ghafar’s demand. Dr. Cochran then took
the matter in hand. As a result Ghafar and the Dasht
Kurds plotted to kill him.

The journey from Urumia to Julfa on the Aras
River, which divides Russia from Persia, even when
not dangerous is rough and uncomfortable, and the
Station always arranged that some one of the men
should accompany, at least to Julfa, any of the women
missionaries leaving for Europe or for home. On
March 4, 1904, Miss Margaret Dean, who had been
the teacher of the children of the mission circle, and
Miss Paulat, of the German Orphanage, which had
been established in 1896, and Pastor Wolff, a Swedish
missionary, started for Russia, and Mr. B. W. Labaree
went with them. It appears quite certain that enemies
of Dr. Gochran understood that he, and not Mr.

22

Labaree, was going out with the party and sent word
to Sayid Ghafar and to the Kurds of Dasht that they
could, without risk of detection, follow them and
attack them outside of the Urumia district and kill
the doctor. When the party left Urumia, unconscious
of any special danger, the Sayid and thirteen of the
Dasht Kurds followed, but failed to overtake them.
They inquired in Salmas of the movements of the
missionaries and learning that some were to come
back soon on the return to Urumia, they waited for
them, and when Mr. Labaree and his servant returned,
the Kurds divided and held the three roads by one of
which they must pass. On the one which they chose,
the Sayid and three Kurds met and murdered them.
The crime filled Western Persia with horror, the more
so as the men who committed it were known to have
aimed at the man who was more loved and more
feared than any other man in Western Persia.
British and American consuls were sent to Urumia to
take matters in hand, and they did their work, of
course, with and through Dr. Cochran. The extra
toil, the sorrows of the villagers who were in constant
terror, and the grief which he felt at Mr. Labaree’s
death in his stead, weighed on his heart by day and
by night. Those who watched him saw his hair
whitening and the lines of his face deepening and
perceived that the burden he was bearing was pressing
with perilous weight. “How can I eat of your bread,”
he said to the governor with whom, under constraint,
he was dining, “when it is your fault that my brother
has been killed?” “His intense feeling all through
those awful months is, as I feel,” writes Mrs. Labaree,
“what hastened his end more than anything else. He
never voluntarily spoke to me of the fact that Mr.

23

Labaree died for him, but when he would take my
little fatherless children into his arms, such a look of
suffering and grief came into his face as I never want
to see again. The more I think of it, the more con-
vinced I am that death was absolutely the only way
out of the maze of suffering, danger and anxiety in
which the doctor found himself. And God in His
love and mercy did not try His servant beyond his
strength but gently released him. I love to think that
Dr. Cochran and Mr. Labaree look at the whole awful
tragedy frotn God’s side now and together, in the light,
they are convinced that they were led safely through
the awful darkness that surrounded their deaths. And
I also love to think that we, too, shall know and under-
stand some day, and in that hope we may even now
rest satisfied that ‘all is right that seems most wrong,
if it be His dear will.’ ”

VI. De.\th and the Mourning

He went on with his work but the burden was too
great for him, and on July 21, 1905, after a delightful
communion service among the missionaries, he spoke
of having a fever and terrible aching. For several
days he would pay no attention to it, for he had a very
serious case of typhoid fever under his care, one of
the leading Mohammedan ecclesiastics of the city.
Under his firm sense of duty he insisted on going into
the city each day to see his patient, the Bala Mujtahid,
until he fell in a faint in his yard, and was compelled
to give up. Even then he declined any medical assist-
ance. He said with a smile that he would look after
himself until he lost his senses and then others might

24

be called. All that could be done for him was done,
and under the skillful care of Dr. Vanneman of
Tabriz, who drove over, the fever was broken, but
his heart and other organs had borne too great a strain.
The hard work and overwhelming burdens that he
had carried, work and burdens that he could not do
and bear perfunctorily but that ate into his life, had
sapped his vitality, and he grew weaker, mercifully
without pain, until at three o’clock on the morning of
August 18, 1905, the true soul went quietly to its
reward. In the days of his delirium he had often been
thinking of the Kurds, and once he spoke about
Heaven and added, “And there will be no Kurds
there.’’ In the land to which he was going, he was
thinking, “the wicked cease from troubling, and the
weary are at rest.” He would be beyond all Kurdish
plots and hatreds and fears then. But there were
Kurds there, some of them waiting for him to wel-
come him whither he had guided them.

“Two wives of a nobleman have called upon me,”
wrote Mrs. Cochran, “dressed in mourning for Joe
and told me that all the Moslems in the city were wear-
ing mourning for him. The Syrians wept day and
night and held memorial services in their churches,
as they had before held special services of prayer,
and many had fasted and prayed for days before that
his life might be spared. A rugged Kurd came yes-
terday, saying if the sahibs were not here he must see
me, and he wept with sobs that shake a strong man’s
frame and told how on one hand he had saved his life
and on the other he had saved his soul. He had
worked three years over him in the hospital for a
wound he had, and while here he had been converted.”

All the Moslems were not wearing mourning for

25

him, but to say that sorrow filled the whole city and
plain is to speak soberly. “For days,” wrote the Rev.
R. M. Labaree, who had resigned his church in
America to come out to take his brother’s place, “the
governor and the principal men of Urumia had been
sending around men to inquire as to his condition;
missionaries and every one connected with us were
repeatedly stopped in the streets by total strangers
to be asked in regard to him. That night all the
people in the college yards assembled about the house,
weeping, and slipped up quietly to get one more
glimpse of the face they loved so well, as he lay on
his bed unconsciously breathing out his life. And
when the end came, every one felt in all this city that
he had lost a personal friend- — and this in every walk
of life, from the governor, who burst into tears on
hearing the news, to the poorest beggar, two of whom
on the day of the funeral threw themselves upon the
ground at the foot of the casket and in true Oriental
fashion beat their heads upon the ground until they
were forcibly removed. It was this sense of personal
loss on the part of hundreds of every nationality and
grade of life that was to me the most impressive thing
that I ever encountered at a funeral service. What
sort of a man was this that could so impress himself
upon high and low, upon Nestorian of every form of
faith, upon Persian, Armenian, Jew and even Kurd,
as his own personal friend? And I could not but think
how cheap would have been the reputation and wealth
that the doctor could have easily attained in the home-
land compared with the love and the trust and the
almost worship that he has won here in Persia.”

He was buried amid the sorrow of the whole city,
and the leading Mohammedan preacher in Urumia

26

publicly eulogized him in the mosque, declaring that
even from the religious point of view he was a man
whom Moslems should admire.

VII. Estim.a.tes of the Man and His Work

And Mirza Abdul Kazim Agha’s judgment of him
was just. Courtesy and considerateness were part of
his nature. He was a man of clear and quick judg-
ment and of strong and unhesitating action, but he
was not overbearing, or assertive, or discourteous.
He did not surrender his politeness or dignity under
excitement. No one ever saw his forbearance over-
taxed, though there were times when the strain was
greater than even those closest to him knew. Jealousy
and malice and selfishness were qualities of a lower
plane than that on which he moved. “Among those
characteristics in him, which impressed me most
deeply,” wrote an American woman, “was his gentle-
manliness. He was a gentleman by instinct as well
as training.” Professor Linden, one of his instructors
in the Central High School in Buffalo, said of him as
a boy; “He was the most perfect gentleman I have
ever known among my pupils. Instinctive gentleman-
liness was emphasized by a singular gentleness toward
and thoughtfulness for others. I have never, even
under most trying circumstances, known him to be
impatient or thoughtless of others’ feelings.”

He was a delightful conversationalist. His own
experience, his knowledge of Persian stories, his con-
tact with life in many lands, his exhaustless fund of
anecdotes and his quiet and playful wit, made him
the most delightful of companions. He was always
ready for any social emergency. When the Vali Ahd,

27

the grandfather of the present Shah of Persia, visited
Urumia some years ago, the doctor went out with
many others to greet him. The Vali Ahd called him
up to the carriage and held out his hand to him, asking
to have his pulse felt and a medical opinion of his
condition given immediately. In Persia every avail-
able doctor is consulted as a matter of course and is
expected to give a correct diagnosis on the spot after
feeling the pulse and looking at the tongue. Dr.
Cochran felt the pulse with all due solemnity and
then, with quiet acceptance of the Oriental situation,
pronounced the entirely satisfactory verdict, “It feels
as though royal blood were coursing through it.” It
was this light humor which brightened all his social
intercourse.

His charm was heightened by his genuine modesty.
There was no pretentiousness or boasting of any sort.
He always depreciated his abilities. He could write
the most fascinating reports, but he spoke of them
with diffidence and humility. He shrank from self-
advertisement of every sort. “In 1889,” wrote one
of his sisters, “when my brother visited my home in
Sparta, N. Y., he yielded to my wishes and spoke in
our church one Sunday evening. It was always hard
for him to talk about work in which he had taken a
prominent part. I wanted him to tell about the cir-
cumstances leading to his receiving the decoration
from the Shah and to show the stars to the audience.
But with his characteristic modesty, he went to the
service without them, and they were only shown when
my husband in the pulpit, against my brother’s protest,
fastened them upon his coat while he was speaking.”
And it was so also in Persia. He went about in a
quiet and unpretentious way, careful always to do

28

what the Persians deemed proper, but with no show
or retinue of any sort.

With innumerable provocations to lose his temper,
he was noted for his calm and tranquil spirit and his
patient acceptance of disappointment and thwarted
plans. How wonderful such self-control is those will
appreciate who know the strain to which it is subjected
in an Oriental land. He had come, not to be minis-
tered unto, but to minister, and he did not chafe at
hindrances which he could not remove, nor complain
because the conditions of service were difficult and
trying. The natives never ceased to be impressed
with his patience and quietness. By his example he
preached as powerfully as any man ever preached by
words.

He truly loved the people, Mohammedan and Chris-
tian, and they knew that he loved them and that he
was living for them and that, in a true sense, in his
Master’s spirit and name, he was bearing their trans-
gressions and sins and giving himself for them.

But the inner spring of his life was not feeling, but
a firm and noble sense of duty and a steadfast devotion
to what was right. This unbending conscientiousness
showed itself in his frugality and precision in the use
of mission money. He would never countenance any
extravagance. If it was necessary for some one to
undertake the unpleasant duty of scrutinizing another
man’s accounts and making criticism, he was ready.
He wrote long letters to explain the necessity of what
many would regard as small expenditures. But the
money was all sacred money in his eyes, and an outlay
of $200 needed the same moral justification as an
outlay of $200,000. He obeyed with scrupulous
fidelity all the rules of the Station, the Mission and

29

the Board, and he thought that others should do so.
He was courteous but perfectly firm in refusing to
countenance loose disregard of these rules and all
easy-going irregularity. He saw no reason why
righteousness should cause bad feeling. “It is news
to me,” he wrote of one whose carelessness he had to

check, “that Mr. entertained any but the kindest

feelings toward me, as I have never had any other
toward him.” All moneys which came to him in his
work he carefully accounted for and would not regard
presents to him for medical service as personal, but
always credited them to the hospital ; and if he wanted
to keep a rug or a horse which had been given him, he
would pay its value into the hospital funds. He had
a sense of honor in such things as fine and keen as
the edge of the sharpest dagger blade worn by any of
his Kurdish friends or foes. He never shirked work
or evaded duty, however hard and unpleasant. He
never complained of having too much on hand, or of
being loaded with more than his share of work.

But he had no careless hands. His touch was ever
gentle and healing, and he threw his whole self into
all that he did. “He was so very careful,” wrote one
of the Anglican missionaries, “at every turn to do the
thing he had in hand and that only and had an extraor-
dinary capacity for throwing himself into the work
that he was for the time engrossed with. On each
occasion he seemed to be a different person, yet
through all he was the same. It is difficult to explain
what I mean, but I know it came to him on account
of his being able to throw himself so whole-heartedly
into the task he had in hand, that for the time being he
forgot his other gifts. It is from such lives that we
learn the meaning of missionary zeal.”

30

if

I

In his relations to his fellows his magnanimity was
unbounded. He offered once to give up his post in
Urumia to another and go to Salmas, or if it would
be more acceptable, to have the friend to whom he
was writing come to Urumia and take the first place.
Dr. Cochran taking a place as his assistant. And the
proposition was made in all honesty and sincerity.
He was not seeking his own but the things of Jesus
Christ.

Such a man made a profound impression on all who
came to know him. The English and Russian consuls
were won by him and took him into their confidence.
Whatever was worth knowing about affairs in North-
western Persia he knew. Officials all over the Empire
knew him and respected him. In Urumia he walked
to and fro as a living Christian evidence. “Mingling
so freely as he does with the higher classes of Moslems
I in this town,” wrote Dr. Labaree in 1903, “he is creat-

ing a deeper impression upon them as to the superior
worth of the Christian faith than arguments from the
most able controversialists could do.” And his work
was helping to produce wide-reaching and enduring
changes. In religious character, as well as in social
' and political conditions, the Nestorians and to no

small extent the Moslems of the field in which he
worked were deeply affected by his life. They are
I not, and never can be again what they were when he

came in 1878, as a young man, to contribute his life
to the enlarged work of the “Mission to the Nesto-
rians.” “It is a vindication of the American mission-
ary effort beyond cavil, that when their field is lighted
; up by an event of world-wide interest such a work

is revealed, the fruit of two generations of Ameri-
cans,” said the Boston Transcript in an editorial in

31

January, 1907, with regard to the agitation in Persia
for a constitution, which it closed with an account of
Dr. Cochran, “who played a role to some extent such
as the one that other modern hero, ‘Chinese Gordon,’
enacted in China.”

Ever since Dr. Cochran had come as a boy of fifteen
to America in 1870 his most intimate friend had been
Mr. S. M. Clement, Yale 1883. Mr. Clement had
gone out to Persia to visit him in 1883, and no one
knew better what kind of man he was, and this was
Mr. Clement’s careful judgment: “His was a pure

life of consecration to the highest ideals, and an abso-
lutely unselfish devotion to duty. Here was a man
who had put aside the alluring ambitions of a most
promising professional career in this country and was
living day by day, and every day, the Christ-life amid
the perils and privations of fanatical, heathen Persia.
Nothing but the teaching and example of Christ can
explain such a life ; and he had more of His spirit than
any man I have ever known.”

32