Western medicine in Palestine, 1860-1940: the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society and its hospital.

This study considers the development of Western medicine in Palestine, focusing on the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society's hospital in Nazareth. This hospital-one of the earliest British medical institutions in the region-was created by the society in Palestine in 1866. R4sum4. Ce texte 6tudie le d6veloppement de la maecine occidentale en Palestine, et plus particulierement l'histoire d'une des plus anciennes institutions medicales britanniques 6tablies dans la region, l'hbpital fond6 B Nazareth en 1866 par la Soci6t6 missionnaire d'Edimbourg. During the nineteenth century, the Near East became a field where Europeans and North Americans established institutions of health care and higher learning. These developments related to religious missionary fervor and more gmeral European expansion. In the lands of the Ottoman Empire, foreign cultural intrusion was encouraged by the socalled millet system, where the Turkish authorities permitted local religious institutions to operate with a relatively free hand. In the followI ing discussion, I consider one of the earliest foreign medical missionary efforts, that of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society.' A PROTESTANT CIVILIZING MISSION The Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society was founded in November 1841 at the instigation of the Scottish physician John Abercr~mbie.~ Adel A. Ziadat, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan and Centre for Developing-Area Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7. CBMH/BCHM / Volume 10: 1993 / p. 269-79