GREAT
THINGS FOR GOD:
INTRODUCTION
GREAT THINGS
FOR GOD
Part 1 (#115) told how William
Carey brought the Bible to India and challenged widow burning, burning
of lepers, killing of the sick, sacrificial drowning of infants, the
caste
system, and the ideology behind these evils – reincarnation and karma.
Part II tells
how Ida
Sophia Scudder (1870-1960)
brought scientific medicine to India's women and children. Her 1-bed
mission
hospital became the Vellore Christian Medical College & Hospital,
one
of the great hospitals and medical teaching centres of Asia.
EARLY
LIFE
As a
7-year-old on a
mission station in India Ida
Scudder spent mornings distributing bread to starving children. It was
the "Great Famine of 1877". It didn't rain for three years and 5
million
people died.
The parents
then sent
Ida to school in America where
she lived the life of a 19th century city girl. She determined never to
be a missionary – the heat, dust, flies, and squalor were not for her.
At 19,
however, a
letter
from India told of her
mother's ill health. Ida hastened back to the three-roomed, sun-baked
brick,
mud-plastered, thatched-roof house.
Ida's parents,
Dr John
Scudder (known as Dr John)
and Mrs John, were Christian missionaries in Tamil Nadu, South India.
Dr
John was constantly on the move preaching, healing, and baptizing. He
preached
in little mud-walled churches or on outdoor pulpits, his words
sometimes
drowned out by chanting Hindus dancing around incense altars.
Hindus and
Muslims
kept
their wives secluded and
wives spent their lives hidden in hot, windowless, mud brick houses. A
sick wife would put her hand through a hole in the wall for Dr. John to
take the pulse. He could do little more than give advice, based on
examining
the hand, and prescribe medicine.
Carolyn Scott (1970) tells of the following conversation between Dr. John and Ida: "And
the women believe that cool water is bad for fever, and clean water is
unholy, and illness is the will of the gods to punish evil. They have
never heard of gods who love, Ida. They've never heard of gods
like that."
"But you tell them, Father." "Yes, I tell them." And perhaps one day they will understand. But they don't yet." (p.21)
Next day the
three
girls
– they were child brides – died and the rhythmic beat of tom-toms
announced their deaths. Dr. John
explained, "It's their law. It's their right and wrong."
Ida prayed
about the
tragedy and felt God calling
her to minister to the health of India particularly women and children.
"I met God face to face," she said and decided to study medicine.
DOCTOR
IDA SCUDDER
Few 19th
century women
studied medicine – it was
a male profession. But in 1899 Ida graduated from Cornell Medical
College.
Mission-board
secretary
Dr. Cobb suggested a hospital
for Vellore. Ida made many public appearances to raise money. Finally a
Mr. Schell donated $10,000 equivalent today to about $500,000.
HOSPITAL
IN VELLORE
Ida Scudder
returned
to
India. In 1900 she opened
a one-bed clinic in Vellore and named it Mary Taber Schell Hospital
(after
Mr Schell's wife).
Ida worked
under her
father's supervision, giving
out medicines and helping in operations, and studied the local
language,
Tamil. After five months her father died. She trained a local girl,
Salomi,
as nurse and carried on setting broken bones, extracting pebbles from
ears,
issuing ointment for eyes – saving people from blindness – and
delivering
babies, often in 110oF heat.
At the first
birth Dr.
Scudder attended, the mother
was dying of thirst but the grandmother refused to bring sufficient
water: "The spirits
forbade
water. Superstition said that
the sick were unclean. Evil spirits would lurk in the house and the
gods
would be angry…" (p. 41)
Seething with
frustration
Dr. Scudder marched outside
and addressed the husband and other men who knew English: "Are you
afraid
too? Did education teach you to be afraid of superstition? To be afraid
of spirits in sticks and stones? What do you want? A dead superstition
or a dead wife?" (p. 42)
Pitchers of
water were
brought; the girl recovered;
a boy was born. DOCTOR
AT WORK
Long lines of
barefoot
patients queued daily keeping
Dr. Scudder busy from dawn till night while Salomi fetched bandages,
lotions
and needles and rocked crying babies. Patients in the hospital often
brought
their own mats to sleep on because they feared the height of the
hospital
beds.
After a long
struggle
to
save a Muslim girl giving
birth, then tending the baby girl several days, Dr. Scudder sensed
unease
among the relatives camped outside. The baby was healthy but the
relatives
called it an "evil day" and did not want to see it.
One morning
prompted
by
an inner voice Ida rushed
out of the dispensary, along the verandah to the ward. A female
relative
was suffocating the baby with a pillow while the mother watched and
cried.
As years passed many orphans were saved from death and received a Christian home at Vellore: Padmathi...had been found by a cowherd, crying in a thorn bush hours after she was born.
Ganesha had had been brought to the hospital from the gaol where her mother died. Garuda and Krishna... found dying on the roadside, two bundles of skin and bone. (p. 51) [The Bible teaches that children are a blessing from God. Jewish/Christian rejection of infanticide became law in the 4th century, was gradually adopted worldwide, and saved hundreds of millions of children. See #41; #51] In 1904-1907 the rat-bourne plague, the black death, struck. In area after area people loaded wagons and fled. The local Indian Municipal Chairman in Vellore refused innoculation:
He
believed
that Kali,
Goddess of Death would be
angry with him if he tried to cheat her. Nothing would have persuaded
him
to allow his own family to be inoculated. (p. 58)
Similarly most
people.
Plague was the will of the
gods and would not be stopped with a needle – rather, sacrifices in the
temple. Fires blazed before altars and people brought gifts to placate
the goddess of disease and drums throbbed to announce deaths. Fear made
the bottles of vaccine in the hospital useless.
Ida sought out
sick
people left behind when families
fled. She cajoled, persuaded, burned contaminated clothes and straw,
and
disinfected houses.
MOBILE
CLINICS
Dr. Scudder
began
going
further afield to take health
care to the poor and disabled.
In 1916 she
had a car
and, with Salomi, visited
villages up to 50 miles away and set up roadside dispensaries. A table
could be slid out and medicines and instruments arranged on it. Many
villagers
had never seen a modern doctor, or nurse, or a car. "The devil!" some
screamed.
In ignorance
and
prejudice village headmen often
ordered Ida to leave. In another instance:
The
villagers
were well-bred and very proud of their
high caste. Ida was a stranger. Because
she was a stranger, they considered her "unclean", and they certainly weren't going to accept medicines from unclean hands. (p. 63) Gradually,
however,
perseverance brought change.
In ever more villages people lined up to receive medicine, get broken
bones
set, tumors excised, drops put into eyes, or be inoculated.
These roadside
dispensaries, over decades, developed
into extensive, internationally acclaimed, rural health programs to
which
medical students, nurses and surgeons from around the world contributed
skills.
MEDICAL
SCHOOL
In 1909 Dr
Scudder's
mission at Vellore had a School
of Nursing, a white building with white pillars and stone steps, and a
car from America.
There were now
so many
patients she wanted to train
Indian women for the Licensed Medical Practitioner diploma. Indian men
could become doctors if they passed the British Medical Department
exams
in Madras – but women?
In 1918 Dr.
Scudder
opened the Vellore Medical School
for Women to train women as doctors and 14 women completed the course.
All passed their exams, competing successfully with the men! With
training
of women as nurses and doctors Indian women began getting access to
health
care professionals.
EYE
CAMPS
Again years
passed and
"eye camps" organized by
the Vellore Medical Mission became reality. A blue van carrying two
doctors, nurses, orderlies
and a cook, pulled a trailer piled with medical supplies, lanterns,
mats
and pillows from village to village.
Averaging
three
operations each per hour the two
doctors operated on 70 blind people per day. Returning a week later to
remove stitches they also dispensed glasses.
MEDICAL
COLLEGE and HOSPITAL
First a tiny
mission
dispensary where patients wouldn't
come; then the Vellore Medical School that became a college; then
mobile
clinics that cured the blind; finally a great teaching and medical
centre
where thousands every day are treated.
The Vellore
Christian
Medical College & Hospital
employs 4500 people, treats 2000 outpatients per day, has 2000 beds,
holds
Bible Classes, and sends numerous medical workers to outlying rural
areas.
It has dozens of clinics and departments including Accident and
Emergency,
Anaesthesia, Blood Bank, Cardiology, Child Health, Clinical Genetics,
Dental
& Oral Surgery, Dermatology, Endocrinology, General Surgery,
Hematology,
Immunology, Leprosy, Nephrology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Oncology,
Orthopaedics, Paediatrics, Physical Rehabilitation, Plastic Surgery,
Psychiatry,
Pulmonary Medicine, Radiation Therapy, Radiology, Reproductive
Medicine,
Urology, etc. (Krishnakumar 1999)
At 80 Ida
Scudder
still
supervised younger doctors:
Her
original
hospital had spread. Students had graduated
and gone to every part of India, taking
with them the knowledge and love she had taught. And now, every day brought in new stories, new miracles, new discoveries, new cures. (Scott p. 87) References:
Krishnakumar, A. Frontline, Volume 16, Issue 26, Dec. 11-24, 1999. Scott, C. 1970 The Doctor Who Never Gave Up, Lutterworth. |