[Illustration: Kamala (Lotus Flower), Winner of The Gold Medal in
Anatomy in Vellore Medical School]
[Illustration: A Little Lost One—What Will Such Girls Do for India?
CONTRASTS]
A Problem In Multiplication.
Was it, one wonders, the memory of the Gudiyattam road, and those like it in nameless thousands, that burned deep into Dr. Ida Scudder's heart and brain the desire to found a Medical School, where the American Doctor might multiply herself and reproduce her life of skillful and devoted service in the lives of hundreds of Indian women physicians? It is the only way that the message of the Good Physician, His healing for soul and body, may penetrate those village fastnesses of dirt, disease, and ignorance. One hundred and sixty women doctors at present try to minister to India's one hundred and sixty millions of women, shut out by immemorial custom from men's hospitals and from physicians who are men. "What are these among so many?" What can they ever be except as they may multiply themselves in the persons of Indian messengers of healing?
Small Beginnings.
And so, in July, 1918, the Vellore Medical School was opened, under the fostering care of four contributing Mission Boards, and with the approval and aid of the Government of Madras. "Go ahead if you can find six students who have completed the High School Course," said the interested Surgeon General. Instead of six, sixty-nine applied; seventeen were accepted; and fourteen not only survived the inevitable weeding out process, but brought to the school at the end of the first year the unheard of distinction of one hundred per cent, of passes in the Government examination. That famous first class is now in its Senior Year, and by the time this book comes from the press will be scattering itself among thirteen centres of help and health.
And so, in rented buildings, the Medical School started life. If ever an institution passed its first year in a hand-to-mouth existence, this one has. Short of funds save as mercifully provided by private means; short of doctors for the staff; short of buildings in which to house its increasing student body, for it has grown from fourteen to sixty-seven; short, in fine, of everything needed except faith and enthusiasm and hard work on the part of its founders, it has yet gone on; the girls have been housed, classes have been taught, examinations passed, and the first class is ready to go out into the world of work.
Just here perhaps one brief explanation should be made. These girls will not be doctors in the narrowly technical sense, for the Government of India reserves the doctor's degree for such students as have first taken a college diploma and then on top of it a still more demanding medical course of five years. These students will receive the degree of Licensed Medical Practitioner (L.M.P.) which authorizes them to practise medicine and surgery and even to be in charge of a hospital. The full college may come, we hope, not many years hence, when funds become available. Meantime, this school will year by year be turning out its quota of medical workers whose usefulness cannot be over-estimated.
[Illustration: FIRST BUILDING AT NEW MEDICAL SCHOOL, VELLORE, WHICH IS
HOUSING OUR STUDENTS]
A Visit to Vellore.