Two lady doctors, a vicereine, and a princess: The women behind four historic medical colleges in India

INTRODUCTION

Until the mid-19th century, women were not permitted to practise as physicians of western medicine. On 23 January 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell, the lone woman medical student at the Geneva Medical College in New York State, who had passed her examinations near the top of her class, was conferred the degree of Doctor of Medicine.^1,2 Outrage from the medical community stopped the college from admitting any more women to the medical course.²

By this time, India had newly established colleges of western medicine in the cities of Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1835, Madras (Chennai) in 1835 and Bombay (Mumbai) in 1845.³ With rare exceptions such as Anandibai Joshi (Pennsylvania), Kadambini Ganguli (Calcutta [now Kolkata]), Motibai Kapadia (Bombay) and Rukhmabai Raut (London), few Indian women undertook medical studies during the mid-19th century.⁴

On the other hand, cultural taboos and segregation prevented many women from going to hospitals staffed almost exclusively by male physicians.⁵ Worryingly high maternal and infant mortality rates attributed to early marriages and unsanitary birthing practices brought the necessity of having more trained women doctors front and centre.

In 1882, George A. Kittredge, an American businessman, joined hands with Sorabjee Shapurjee Bengalee, and other affluent families in the erstwhile Bombay Presidency to establish the ‘Medical Women for India Fund’.⁵ Dr Elizabeth Peachy, one of Britain’s first women doctors, was invited to Bombay and funds were raised to build the Cama Hospital for Women, run by women.⁵ Kittredge successfully lobbied for Indian women to be eligible to appear for the same medical examinations as men at the Grant Medical College, Bombay and called for more investment from the government to secure quality medical care for women.⁵

‘It is difficult even now, and soon will be impossible, to realize that in 1882, when our scheme was started, and even in 1883, till December, there was not a lady doctor in the Bombay Presidency, and no money could gain for any native lady the privilege of medical assistance from one of her own sex. In the Madras Presidency a few ladies had taken the inferior degree given by the Medical School there; in Bengal and the North-West there were a few medical missionaries connected with zenana missions.’

––George A. Kittredge, Bombay, 29 March 1889⁵

In 1885, Queen Victoria encouraged the Viceroy’s wife, Hariot Dufferin to examine the feasibility of establishing the Dufferin Fund to promote medical care for women by women.⁶ While the fund employed several lady doctors, largely of expatriate origin, there remained a paucity of trained women physicians.⁶

This article ties together stories of 4 women from diverse backgrounds who established 4 Indian medical colleges (Table I), 3 of which are over a century old. We aim to briefly examine the back stories of the four actors and some key influences that led them to create these institutions.

DR EDITH MARY BROWN AND THE CHRISTIAN MEDICAL COLLEGE, LUDHIANA (1894)

Dr Edith Mary Brown was the Founder-Principal of the North India Medical School for Women in Ludhiana, the first medical training school in Asia exclusively for women (Fig. 1).⁷ The preparation and build-up that led to the establishment of the medical school predates the 1890s. For Edith Brown, it started in the eighth year of her life.⁷

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FIG 1.

Dame Edith Brown, Women’s Christian Medical College, Ludhiana (old name). Source: Christian Medical College, Ludhiana

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In his biography of Edith Brown, Charles Reynolds attributed the untimely death of her father, a religious experience in early youth, and letters from a stepsister in India as factors that motivated Edith to dedicate her life to improving women’s healthcare in India.⁷ Edith’s father died in the eighth year of her life. In a diary entry dated 12 October 1872, she writes about her acceptance of the Lord as her saviour. Letters from her stepsister, married to a missionary in South India’s Godavari district, described the medical needs of women who were not allowed to see a male doctor. Together, these events deeply influenced Edith, culminating in her decision to serve in India. Edith went to study at Girton College, Cambridge, for a science degree to help shape a medical career.⁷ She spent some time teaching at Exeter High School beginning in September 1885 to secure herself financially for enrolling into a good medical training course.⁷

Edith enrolled at the London School of Medicine for Women and the Royal Free Hospital in May 1887. She completed her studies in May 1891 and appeared for examinations for the Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Edinburgh (LRCP and S(E)) and rounded up her training with a Doctorate of Medicine (MD) in Brussels.⁷ Keeping her commitment to the Baptist Zenana Mission which had supported her medical training, as one-half of the first duo of women doctors to be sent to India by the Mission Board, and in line with her aspirations to fulfil her life’s mission, she set sail for India and landed in Bombay in 1891.⁷

Close to the Browns’ family residence in Croydon, London, lived Elizabeth Greenfield whose sisters, Rose Greenfield and Kay Greenfield (a nurse), had served in India. Rose wanted a woman doctor for the Charlotte Hospital at Ludhiana, a hospital she had built during her two decades in India.⁷ Fruitful negotiations with the Baptist Zenana Mission resulted in Edith joining the hospital at Ludhiana for a year. This brought Edith and Rose together on a path that led to the creation of the present-day Christian Medical College at Ludhiana. Rose organized a meeting of women missionaries engaged in medical work in North India in December 1893 (the week before Christmas), where Edith presented a scheme for founding a medical school run by trained medical women to train Indian women as assistant surgeons, hospital assistants, nurses and compounders.⁷ On 20 December 1893, during that meeting, Edith said, ‘Many times, I have felt really in despair! I have felt restricted and limited in my work. Women needing medical aid have been in the village and unable to come to me. On the other hand, I could not leave the hospital unattended and go to them. How can good and effective work be done with no trained helpers?’ ‘There is a crying need for trained Indian women to be medical assistants, and as that training is not available anywhere, we must start it,’ she added.⁷ Between 1891 and 1893, Edith had seen healthcare facilities for women in different parts of northern and north-western India: there were busy hospitals without women doctors, women doctors without hospital facilities, non-accredited training programmes for health workers, medical colleges in Agra and Lahore which few women joined, and medical graduates unwilling to serve in the villages.⁷

In a rented school building, with the Charlotte Hospital as its first teaching hospital, the North India School for Christian Women began in October 1894 with four students in its first batch enrolled for a 4-year medical education course. These students appeared for their Hospital Assistants’ examination in Lahore a year later.⁷ It was a small beginning in terms of infrastructure, faculty strength (four staff in December 1894) and student numbers, but the institution endured, and two decades later, two other visionaries would go on to start medical schools for women in Delhi and Vellore. The North India School of Medicine was renamed Women’s Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, in 1912.⁷

LADY WINIFRED HARDINGE AND THE LADY HARDINGE MEDICAL COLLEGE, NEW DELHI, 1916

Winifred Selina, the daughter of Baron Alington, of the affluent Sturt family of Dorset, came to India in 1910 when her husband, Lord Hardinge of Penhurst, was appointed the Viceroy of India shortly before the colonial capital moved from Calcutta to Delhi (Fig. 2). The viceregal couple faced an assassination attempt in December 1913.⁹ A bomb thrown at their elephant-howdah killed the umbrella-holder and wounded the viceroy. The vicereine escaped injury.^8,9 The couple’s courage and composure, and the absence of violent retaliation, won them much sympathy.⁹ As plans for the new capital city progressed, Lady Hardinge took up the responsibility of establishing a medical college, a hospital for women, and a training school for nurses, in the soon-to-be-built city of Delhi.⁹–¹¹

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FIG 2.

Lady Hardinge of Penhurst. Source: Unknown author, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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The proposal received generous contributions from several Indian royal families, and on 17 March 1914, at the laying of the foundation stone Lady Hardinge said: ‘At the present time there are 89 female students scattered over the colleges of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Lahore, but very few of these are either Hindus or Mussulmans … and it is obvious that if we wish to extend female medical aid to all classes of women of India, we must increase the number of Hindu and Mahomedan medical women who thoroughly understand the ways, the customs, and the language of the zenana. When, therefore His Highness placed his proposal before me I conceived the idea of a medical college and hospital for women, the entire medical and tutorial staff of which should consist of medical women and which should be open to female medical students of all classes, creeds and nationalities.’¹⁰

That was her last public function in India. Lady Hardinge had been unwell for a while. On 21 March 1914, Lord Hardinge inaugurated the Victoria Docks in Bombay and bid farewell to his wife as she boarded a ship to England.⁸ On 11 July 1914, Winifred Hardinge died in London after surgery for a malignant tumour. She was 46 years old.^8,9 Six months later, her 22-year-old son passed away in England––a casualty of the First World War.¹²

Before her death, Lady Hardinge had collected over a £100 000 for the medical college and hospital.⁹ Her vision was not for ornate buildings, but for an institution with an excellent faculty of women, and the best equipment possible.⁹ On 17 February 1916, towards the end of his viceregal term, Lord Hardinge inaugurated the Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital and Nursing School. It was, in his words, ‘the finest memorial any woman could have.’^8,10 Thus, the first medical college in the capital city of Delhi was built for women. It remains exclusively a women’s college to this day.

DR IDA SCUDDER AND THE CHRISTIAN MEDICAL COLLEGE, VELLORE, 1918

Born in 1870 in Ranipet, South India, into an American family of medical missionaries, Ida Sophia Scudder originally had no intention of following the family tradition (Fig. 3).¹³ At the age of 20 years, while on a visit to her parents’ mission station, Ida encountered three husbands who refused to let a male doctor (her father) attend to their critically ill wives. All three women died that night, leaving a shaken Ida to ponder her call. She resolved that day to become a doctor and return to serve the women of India.¹⁴

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FIG 3.

Dr Ida Sophia Scudder, Christian Medical College, Vellore

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Ida Scudder first joined the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1895 and then transferred to the first co-ed batch of Cornell, New York.^13,14 In 1899, soon after she had qualified as a doctor, the Mission Board asked her to raise funds for a women’s hospital in Vellore, as pregnant women needing surgical obstetric care were unwilling to be admitted to a mixed-gender hospital. In 1900, Ida started her medical work in India in a single- room dispensary. The 24-bedded Mary Taber Schell Hospital came into being in 1902 and was soon providing a range of medical, surgical, obstetric and community outreach services.^13,14

In 1909, Ida Scudder’s only medical colleague left to take charge of another mission hospital in Madanapalle. Ida worked hard to keep up the high standards of obstetric and surgical care that people had received from the popular Schell Hospital, its dispensary and community outreach services but was acutely aware that there was a much greater need in the community.^13,14 ‘Again and again during the past year I have been urged to open dispensaries in different villages about Vellore… Our influence will be multiplied a hundred-fold, but where are the workers? Will no one respond to the call of India’s women?’ she wrote in desperation.¹³

At a Missionary Conference in Kodaikanal in 1913, Dr Ida Sophia Scudder proposed a Union Medical College for Women in the South. Through the years of the First World War, Ida and a small band of women doctors lobbied with the government of Madras Presidency and with their church boards to support the setting up of a medical school for women in southern India.^13,14 Ida saw her medical school in rented buildings inaugurated on 12 August 1918.

When her first batch of 14 students graduated in 1922, Principal Ida Scudder reminded them: ‘The practice of medicine affords scope for the exercise of the best faculties of mind and heart… The suffering need love, sympathy and tenderness… Know thoroughly the scientific principles, be a master in your work, your study, your technique… In the future may we together help India to take her right stand among the great nations of the world.’¹⁶ The institution was renamed the Christian Medical College Vellore in 1945. It remained a women’s medical college until 1947, the year of India’s independence.

RAJKUMARI AMRIT KAUR AND THE ALL INDIA INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES, NEW DELHI, 1954

In 1946, a year before India became an independent nation, the Joseph Bhore Committee recommended that an All-India Medical Institute be developed to create facilities to impart high-quality medical education, training and research (Table II).¹⁶ It fell to the first Health Minister of independent India to implement the committee’s recommendations

Born in 1887, into the royal family of Kapurthala, to Punjabi– Bengali parents, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur was educated at Oxford University (Fig. 4a).¹⁷ The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 moved Amrit Kaur to plunge into India’s independence movement. In 1930, she became the secretary to Mahatma Gandhi, serving in this post for 17 years.^17,18 Uplifted by the allyship with Mahatma Gandhi and continuing with her passionate and persistent advocacy for gender equity in education and health, Kaur became the first Health Minister of independent India, the only woman in the first cabinet.¹⁷ She was also adjudged the ‘Woman of the Year’ for 1947 by Time magazine in the year 2020.¹⁸

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FIG 4a.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Source: Wikimedia Commons

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FIG 4b.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Union Minister for Health (centre) with Dr Jacob Chandy, the first neurosurgeon in Asia, and Dr Ida Sophia Scudder, Founder Principal Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, at the inauguration of the neurosurgical wards at CMC, Vellore on 20 February 1954

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In 1956, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur moved the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences Bill for consideration in the Lok Sabha. ‘It has been one of my cherished dreams that for post-graduate study and for the maintenance of high standards of medical education in our country, we should have an institute of this nature in India which would enable our young men and women to have their post-graduate education in their own country, in their background with the necessary experience that we would all like to have of work in villages and the impetus that we would like to give to them to do research in the various spheres of medical education.’¹⁹ The All India Institute of Medical Sciences was established through the AIIMS Act dated 2 June 1956,²⁰ with Dr Bhalchandra Babaji Dikshit, as the first Director.²¹

Each of the above four institutions, while founded by women, has been built by many (men and women) who have worked as physicians, administrators, educators, nurses, and others. More of their stories need to be told.