A nurse in a cross armband examines a child. Harpoot, c. 1919-1922.

Item Detail

Near East Relief ran the Annie Tracy Riggs Memorial Hospital at Mezereh, opened in 1910. In October 1919, Parmelee described Saturday physical examinations and dental work for the orphan children at the unit. The armband is pale with a dark medical cross and no lettering. Three American nurses served the Harpoot medical staff alongside the two doctors in 1920.

Context

Ruth Azneve Parmelee (1885-1973) was born in Trebizond to American missionary parents and studied with them until the family returned to the United States when she was eleven. She earned her degree at Oberlin and her medical degree at the University of Illinois, then sailed back to Turkey in May 1914 as the first woman physician to settle in the Euphrates Valley. In Harpoot she practiced obstetrics, trained nurses and cared for war orphans, and she was there through the deportations of 1915. She held the post until 1917, resumed it in 1919, and was compelled to leave in January 1922. She reached Salonica that October, opened a maternity hospital under the American Women's Hospitals, and founded Greece's first school of nursing. She stayed in the country, in one post or another, for thirty years.