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

Abstract

We introduce the stories of the lives of four women founders of four Indian medical colleges: Dr Edith Brown who founded the North Indian Medical School for Christian Women, Ludhiana (present-day Christian Medical College, Ludhiana); Lady Winifred Hardinge, after whom the Lady Hardinge Medical College, Delhi was named; Dr Ida Sophia Scudder who founded the Christian Medical College, Vellore; and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, the cabinet minister responsible for the creation of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. We highlight events and people in their lives crucial to the creation of the four institutions that have had a transformative impact on Indian medical education particularly for women. We observed that very diverse backgrounds and early lives prepared these four women for a mission that in its impact was very similar.