Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical women. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
11/17 (page 701)
![It is, liowever, of course in India and other parts of the East that the necessity for medical women is most apparent, and their usefulness most indisputable. The great publicity given to Lady Dufferin’s movement for supplying medical women to India, and the very influential patronage under which it has been organised, have brought the matter before the nation at large with an emphasis and authority that no private advocate could have commanded. For many years past, however, the facts have been familiar to those specially interested in the welfare of India on the one hand, or in the education of medical women on the other. As long ago as 1867 a medical school for native women was started by Surgeon Corbyn at Bareilly ; and in 1872 the subject was brought before the INIadras Government by Inspector-General Balfour, who bore witness that ‘ of the hundred millions of women in India, at least two-thirds are, by their social customs, debarred alike from receiving the visits of a medical man at their own houses, and from attending at the public hospitals and dispensaries. ... To send among those classes women educated in the medical art seems to be the only means of providing them with scientific medical aid.’ ^ The result of this was the opening of the Madras Aledical College to women in 1875. Not- withstanding this advance, Sir Salar Jung wrote in 1880, that he was of opinion that ‘ it would be a great benefit to India, a benefit that could not be exaggerated, if English medical women, educated completely in England, could settle in the chief towns of India. He estimated the number necessary at first at 1,025, but believed this number would prove wholly insufficient.’ ^ Over a thousand Euglish medical women urgently needed for India in 1880, and in 1887 there are but fifty-four women, all told, on the British Register ! Is it possible to have stronger evidence of the pressing need of increased facilities and national aid for the medical educa- tion of women ? The movement in favour of medical women in India received, however, its first great impetus from the natives themselves, when, in January 1883, a committee chiefly composed of native gentlemen was formed spontaneously in Bombay; and at a meeting held in the following March, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy in the chair, it was announced that about 4,000^ had already been raised for the purpose of bringing women doctors from England, establishing a hospital and dispensary to be worked by them, and providing for the medical education of women at the Bombay Medical College, with scholar- ships as required. The committee were fortunate enough to induce Dr. Edith Pechey to accept the chief appointment in the proposed hospital, and before she landed in Bombay its foundation was laid with great eclat on the 22nd of November, 1883, by H.R.H. the * Circular Memorandum, No. 4218, issued by the Madras Government, 1874. ■ Lecture by Mrs. Scharlieb, M.B. E.S. Lend., at Madras, November 2], 1885.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22468080_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
