Dr. Susan Moody: An American Baha’i Doctor Who Loved Iran

Health workers are the front line in our defense against the coronavirus pandemic – including hundreds of Iranian Baha’i doctors and nurses. But they are not in Iran; instead, they live in countries around the world, treating their patients, where they are admired and praised by the people and governments of the countries where they live. The one country where they cannot do their work is Iran.

Many of these doctors and nurses – who studied and served in Iran – lost their jobs after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They were expelled from the universities and their public sector jobs, barred from practicing medicine, jailed and tortured, and a considerable number of them perished on the gallows or in front of firing squads.

The crime of these Baha’i doctors, nurses and other health workers was their faith in a religion that the rulers of the Islamic Republic believe is a “deviant” faith.

In a new series of articles, called “For the Love of Their Country,” IranWire tells the stories of some of these Baha’i doctors and nurses. In this installment you will read the story of Dr. Susan Moody, an American, who after she became a Baha'i in Chicago also fell in love with Iran. Dr. Moody traveled to Iran and lived there for many years, helping to open the country's first women's hospital ward to establish a girls' school; she offered pioneering health and educational services to Iranian women in the early 20th century.

If you know a Baha’i health worker and have a first-hand story of his or her life, let IranWire know.

A newspaper article published in 1910, during the last years of Iran’s Qajar dynasty, said: “Dr. Moody, an American lady, who knows not only medicine but also specializes in midwifery and gynecological diseases. This benevolent lady loves all her eastern Iranian sisters equally ... We express our utmost gratitude and appreciation to this honorable lady and consider her presence in this country a great gift for Iran. Thanks to the great care of this heavenly person, patients of all religions, Muslim and non-Muslim, regain their health and wellbeing. We ask God to preserve this precious and honorable being for us.”

Dr. Susan Moody was the second female physician to work in Iran. Before her, in the 1880s, Dr. Mary Smith provided  medical services in Iran as a member of the American Missionary Association.

Susan was born on November 20, 1851, in Amsterdam, New York, in the United States. She enrolled at New York University School of Medicine after graduating from high school. Following the death of her parents, Susan briefly dropped out of medical school and moved to Chicago with her brother.

In Chicago, Susan pursued a personal interest in art. She learned music and studied painting and sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts. She continued her studies at Philadelphia and Paris, where she became a professor. But while Susan loved art and was active in the artistic community, her interest in medicine never subdued; once she had met with success in the arts, she returned to medicine, so that she could serve others through her work. Susan enrolled in medical school in Chicago and continued her studies until she graduated as a doctor.

The new Dr. Susan Moody later became acquainted with the Baha'i faith, at the age of 52, through a Baha'i friend. Susan studied the faith, learning Persian so as to study Baha’i prayers and writings; at the same time, separate from her study of the faith, a Baha'i friend also introduced her to Iranian customs. Susan’s study of Persian caused her to fall in love with Iran and its culture.

Dr. Moody was looking for an opportunity to travel to Iran. She was saddened to learn of the poor public health, educational and social situation of Iranian women during the Qajar dynasty in the early 20th century. She believed that Iranian women needed to have equal health and educational opportunities as Iranian men.

Sehat Hospital, the first hospital established by Baha’is in Iran, opened its doors in 1909. Dr. Mohammad Monajem, Dr. Ataullah Bakhshayesh, and Dr. Arastoo Hakim were the founders of this new hospital. They tried to provide the same medical services to women as men from the start. Women’s public and personal health was poorly served at the time. And many women were either reluctant – or their fathers or husbands were reluctant, on their behalf – to be examined by male doctors.

The founders of Sehat Hospital decided to open Iran’s first women's ward. But they faced a shortage of female doctors. They appealed to the Baha'i community in the United States for help.

Dr. Moody left for Iran a few days after being informed of Sehat Hospital's request. She arrived in Tehran on November 27, 1909, and started her work at the hospital from the day of her arrival. She was inspired by the prospect of serving in Iran. The 58-year-old woman worked from early morning until late at night without expressing fatigue and discontent.

Dr. Moody examined and treated patients in the hospital full-time for two months – after which she opened her private office at her residential house on No. 10 Ala Al-Dowleh Street which is now called Ferdowsi Street. She examined patients at the hospital during the day and in her private office during the evenings. Being a female doctor in Tehran made her popular among the city’s women in short order. Her office was full of patients. Dr. Moody's door was open to the poor and she treated them for free. Her notes show she traveled to parts of Tehran she had never visited before, on many occasions, to treat a sick woman who was unable to visit her office.

The customary dress for women during the Qajar period, with the obligatory hijab, were in Dr. Moody’s view a key factor in their poor health. Her medical training suggested that the lack of sunlight or fresh air available to women because of their dress code caused depression and various diseases. The issue was particularly acute for women living in harems. Dr. Moody also found that few women were willing to go to male doctors for treatment; those who did were always insufficiently examined or treated, because they refused to remove their hijabs.

American Doctors and Nurses in Iran

But Dr. Moody was faced with an unmanageable number of female patients just a year after the Sehat Hospital had opened. She invited one of her Baha'i colleagues in the United States, Dr. Sarah Clock, a gynecologist, to join the medical staff at Sehat Hospital. Dr. Clock went to Iran and died in Tehran after 12 years of service to Iranian women.

Two years after settling in Iran, Dr. Moody invited a trained nurse from the United States named Elizabeth Stewart to work with her. Elizabeth left for Iran after receiving Dr. Moody's message. Ms. Stewart's presence in Iran was a new innovation in the Iranian medical sector; for the first time, a nurse educated in nursing was serving patients in a hospital in Iran.

Dr. Moody believed that women's health was inextricably linked to their education. In addition to her medical work, she also taught girls at the Tarbiyat School for Girls in Tehran. In fact Dr. Moody was one of the founders of the Tarbiyat School, in May 1911, which had been opened along with a boys’ school by the Baha’i community. The school taught the basics of hygiene. Dr. Clock also taught Anatomy and Physiology and Ms. Stewart taught First Aid and Nursing. Teaching these courses was a new initiative in the country's educational system and had not been taught in any school before that time.

Dr. Moody invited Lillian Frances Kappes to run the Tarbiyat School. Ms. Kappes taught at the school for nine year – she was a popular teacher. During the widespread typhus, in late 1920, Lillian Kappes contracted the disease and died in Tehran on December 1 of the same year at the age of 42. Dr. Genevieve Coy, a doctor in education and a specialist in educational psychology, later came to Iran on behalf of the Baha'i community in the United States to also teach Iranian girls.

Another innovation introduced by Dr. Moody was the smallpox vaccination of 200 female students in her private office in 1919. Dr. Moody and her colleagues vaccinated female students several months before the establishment of the Pasteur Institute – which became Iran’s principal source of vaccines and national vaccination drives.

Attacked by Religious Extremists

Provocations by the clerics from their pulpits against American women working at Sehat Hospital began in 1921 and continued for some time. The increasing number of visitors to Dr. Moody's office, most of whom were Muslim women, angered traditional religious groups. The mullahs tried to incite people against American doctors by stoking anti-American sentiment.

In August 1924, groups of people gathered in front of Dr. Moody's house. They threw stones and insulted Dr. Moody and her beliefs. Dr. Moody and Ms. Steward, who saw their lives were in danger, asked the United States deputy consul general for help. But the deputy consul general was stabbed to death by protesters in the street just a few days later. The American women realized that it was no longer possible to serve in Iran, and in December of that year, after 15 years of serving Iranian women, they left Iran for the United States.

All the hardships and misfortunes Dr. Moody experienced in Iran did not diminish her love for the country and for Iranians. And she kept looking for an opportunity to return. Dr. Moody finally returned in 1927, though she went without her friend and colleague, Elizabeth Stewart, who had since died of cancer. But Dr. Moody was accompanied by a young woman, Adelaide Sharpe, a teacher at the Italian school in San Francisco, who traveled to Iran to teach students at the Tarbiyat School.

Dr. Moody re-opened her office on a part-time basis, due to her advanced age, and resumed working with the Tarbiyat School. She was so intertwined with Iranians that she even spoke Persian to the American friends who visited her. Dr. Susan Moody died in Tehran at the age of 83, on October 23, 1934, and was buried in the land she loved.

Persian resources:
Baha'i Health Initiatives in Iran (Article): Minoo Fawadi & Sina Fazel, Baran Publishing
Akhtaran-i Taban, Furugh Arbab, Meraat Publishing, New Delhi