This represents, in a simple way, something of the influence and power of the missionary boarding-school upon the region in which it is located. While time is required for the full exercise of this influence, and while the lines can only in the remotest degree ever be traced, it is found that they are far-reaching and fundamental. These schools also prepare students for college. The graduates of the two high schools at Erzroom have gone chiefly to the colleges at Harpoot, Marsovan, and Constantinople.
The city of Sivas, in Asia Minor, was occupied by the Americans as a mission station in 1851. It is located on the old caravan road extending from Samsoun, through
Tokat and Amasia, an eight days' journey by camel, but now covered easily in six days by the Turkish Arabs. It is on the route of the proposed American railroad now under discussion, which is expected to extend eastward into Mamurettaul-Aziz, in the vilayet of Harpoot, and so on southward.
Sivas is noted among archaeologists for its ruins of the Seljuko, an ancient Persian dynasty, some of which reveal in their fragments the splendour of the structure of which they formed a part. The city is in the midst of a large and fertile plain, and is the central market for a wide area. It was selected as a location for missionary work because of its strategic position on the caravan road, and its large and thrifty population, which is composed of Turks, Kurds, Greeks, and Armenians.
One of the first missionaries sent into that country was a physician. Doctor West, who, by his successful practice, and, to them, astounding surgical operations, won a reputation which stands to-day unsurpassed even so far as the remote villages of the mountains of that district. The natives still tell of the miracles which Doctor West performed with his surgical instruments, and one can rest assured that these stories have lost nothing as they have passed on into the the second generation and are still doing service in support of scientific medicine. They made it difficult for a modern physician to live up to the reputation of the first missionary doctor seen in that region. As might be expected, this work, at once recognized as of such importance, has been maintained and an American physician is now located at Sivas with a hospital and dispensary.
At the time of Doctor West there were no missionary hospitals, and the dispensary usually consisted of a cupboard in a corner of the doctor's oflBce, or more frequently of saddle bags from which he drew according to his needs on his journeys up and down the country. The first missionary physicians were itinerants with no office hours, but ready whenever and wherever called to render relief to the sick and suffering to the limit of their power. Under the changes that have taken place since those days, the physician naturally and rightfully demands a place in which he can care for patients who are seriously ill or after surgical operations, until danger is passed.
There was no hospital in Sivas until six years ago, when a small house was hired with four beds in it. After passing through various changes, it is now equipped with twenty beds, with a royal permit from Constantinople which puts it upon a legal and recognized basis. The physician in charge, Charles E. Clark, M.D., has a trained nurse as an assistant. The patients who avail themselves of their services range all the way from the beggar on the street to the wealthy government official. Turkish Moslems, Circassian soldiers, Kurds, Armenians, all come to the American doctor and the American dispensary and hospital, when suffering. The hospital is crowded to such extent jthat it must be enlarged to accommodate not only the hospital patients, but the clinics in the dispensary. The.demands which press upon the physician cannot be met with the present equipment. Over five thousand patients were treated in the year 1910.
Several of the colleges administered by American missionaries in Turkey have passed out of the first period of their history, that of laying foundations, and have entered on a period of expansion. One hundred and thirteen high schools and boarding-schools which are the feeders for the colleges, have hitherto lacked the attention and the money necessary for their best development, but now that they are firmly established more attention is being given to the lower schools, without which the colleges cannot do their best work. Several of these high schools are the educational centres of territory larger in extent and containing a greater population than some of our American states.
The Sivas Normal School, located in the heart of Sivas, a city of 65,000 people, and the capital of the ancient Seljuks, is a good example, and until recently was unique in Turkey in the attention it gives to training teachers for the common schools.