sentences:  Perkins' presence set the tone for the American presence in Iran during the second half of the 19th century when the missionary-led American presence took responsibility for a broad network of primary and secondary schools in northwest Iran that served to bring literacy among the indigenous Christian Aramaic speakers - members of the Assyrian Church of the East.Following his example, Americans concentrated on improvements in education, book and periodicals publishing, and especially in establishing the first medical college in Iran (1879).The Americans may also be credited with creating the opportunity to put into writing the vernacular Assyrian neo-Aramaic of the Christians of northwest Iran and producing the first periodical in all of Iran (1849), produced in the language at the American Mission press in Urmia.