Dr.Ida Scudder

Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder was a third-generation American medical missionary who came to serve people in India. The first and second generation of the Scudder family served as medical missionaries in India and Ida as a young girl wanted to spend a lavish lifestyle in America. Her parents were working as medical missionaries in India and once Ida happened to visit India to meet her parents. That night there came a man knocking her door and he pleaded to operate his wife who is going to give birth. Ida said him that she is not a doctor but her father who is a doctor can help him. But the man refused saying that no men is allowed to operate his wife. She was shocked by his answer. Then came another man for the same reason and he refused saying the same. She felt very bad in her heart for the women of this nation. Then came the third man and refused because the doctor is a male. Later on Ida heard that the three women died. She felt so bad and she decided to finish her studies and come and serve the Indian women for the rest of her life. That was her life-changing experience and she dedicated the rest of her life for the plight of Indian women and the fight against bubonic plague, cholera and leprosy. She started a tiny medical dispensary for women at Vellore, Tamil Nadu. She knew that it is impractical to go on alone, so she opened The Mary Taber Schell Hospital in 1902. For the betterment of the South Indian women she decided to open a medical school for girls only. There were 151 applications on the first year in 1918. In 1928 ground was broken for the “Hillsite” medical school campus on 200 acres at Bagayam, Vellore. That year Mahatma Gandhi visited the medical school. She travelled to America numerous times to raise funds for the college and hospital, raising a total in the millions. In 1945 the college was opened or both men and women. In 2003, the Vellore Christian Medical Center was the largest Christian hospital in the world, with 2000 beds and its medical school is now one of the premier medical colleges in India. CMC Vellore has brought many significant achievements to India by starting the first nursing college in 1946 and by performing the first reconstructive surgery for leprosy in the world (1948). CMC Vellore performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1961, performing the first kidney transplant in India (1971), performing first bone marrow transplantation in 1986 and the first successful incompatible kidney transplant in India in 2009. Dr. Scudder won Elizabeth Blackwell Citation from the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary as one of 1952’s five outstanding women doctors. Dr. Ida Sofia Scudder died on May 23, 1960 aged 89 in her Hilltop bungalow in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu.