Paul Calvert spoke with Dr Garth Gilmour, the Executive Director of CMJ, about their work pioneering modern medical treatment in Jerusalem, and Christian education.



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Christ Church
Christ Church

Paul: Would this be under the Turkish Ottoman Empire?

Dr Gilmour: This was during the Ottoman period yes.

This is many decades before the start of the Zionist movement. The Zionist movement officially started in 1882. This is the 1830's, so we are talking about 50 years before the beginning of the Zionist movement.

CMJ was here with that two fold outreach: good works and evangelism.

One of the things that Nicolessen saw, which his colleague from 10 years before had seen as well in the 20's, was that this was a place that was desperately needing modern medical treatment, such as we understand today. Modern being as good as you could get back in the 1830's.

So CMJ pioneered modern medical treatment in Jerusalem. We built the first clinic in the grounds of Christ Church as it is today.

Later on we moved and purchased a plot of land about 1km up the road. There wasn't a road in those days. It was 1km up what became Prophets Street towards the west. They built a purpose built clinic at the entrance to modern Jerusalem, western Jerusalem as it was in the 1860's.

In the 1890's that clinic was dismantled and a fully-fledged hospital was built on the site, and became the first modern hospital in Jerusalem.

So we pioneered modern medical treatment and provision of medical care in Jerusalem.

In fact it is very interesting, because within 30 years of us building our hospital in Prophets Street, it was the first proper hospital in Jerusalem, the Jewish community, the Jewish Yishuv, was somewhat scandalised by the fact that if one of their community wanted proper medical treatment, the only place they could go was to the Christians. Some in the community were especially unhappy about this and made it clear that it was better even perhaps to pay the consequences of not getting treatment than to get treated by the Christians.

Their eye was also laid at the foot of Jewish millionaires who were investing in the country at that stage, and so within something like 30 years nine other hospitals were built along that same street, and all were Jewish hospitals.

In a sense you might wish to interpret that as us provoking them to jealousy.

Paul: Everybody loves chocolate, and you have a Cadbury ward in what used to be the hospital. Why is it the Cadbury ward?

Dr Gilmour: That is very interesting. In the 1890's the Cadbury family were Christians and came from Birmingham. The senior figure of the Cadbury family was touring in the Middle East, and when he was in Egypt with his family he became ill. The hospital had been built, but not completed, and he was told the best place for him to get treatment was here in Jerusalem at our hospital. So he made his way delicately from Egypt to this hospital where he received the best treatment possible, but sadly he died.