Our Scottish Roots

OUR FOUNDERS

Dr Kaloost and Mary Anne Vartan

Pakradooni Kaloost Vartan was an Armenian translator and doctor born in Constantinople. As a young man, he worked as an interpreter for the British Army during the Crimean war. After experiencing the atrocious state of battlefield medical facilities, he decided to pursue a career in medicine.

After the war, Dr Vartan travelled to the UK, receiving medical training through EMMS. He eventually moved to Nazareth, where he worked as a medical missionary, setting up a four-bed clinic in 1861: the first one in Ottoman Galilee. That small clinic soon became the Nazareth Hospital, which is now the main trauma centre offering acute care in Nazareth.

Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Diploma, awarded to Vartan and two other students in 1861 Sometime after that, EMMS sent a representative to check up on the progress of their former student.

The organisation was so impressed by Dr Vartan’s work that they decided to sponsor his clinic, steering EMMS in a new direction.

When Dr Vartan returned to Edinburgh in 1866, he met his future wife, Mary Anne Stewart. She had grown up in a ministry family, and her diaries reveal that she had long envisioned herself becoming the wife of a missionary.

In 1867, Dr Vartan and Mary Anne were married by her father in their family home in Edinburgh. That very same day, the couple travelled to Nazareth to continue the work that Dr Vartan had started, with Mary Anne working alongside her husband as a nurse.

The Vartan’s clinic developed over time into the Nazareth Hospital. In 2001, EMMS split into two independent charities, one of which was EMMS Nazareth, which runs the hospital today. EMMS Nazareth is currently known as the Nazareth Trust and is one of the largest Scottish charities. Our UK headquarters is based in Edinburgh, the city where it all began more than 160 years ago.