The third category was made up of those who sold strange potions and spells as a remedy for illness. The main problem here was that by the time patients realized that the potion or spell was doing no good, it was often too late for regular medical treatment to help them.
Yet Ida also knew that India had once led the world in medical knowledge. Sometime before 1000 B.C., an Indian physician named Dhanantari and his student Susruta had removed tumors, amputated limbs, fitted iron prostheses, and even experimented with skin grafting. They had an understanding of the need for sterile conditions and many other scientific ideas that would be lost for nearly three thousand years after they died. But while India had a wonderful medical heritage, Ida knew that what counted now was improving medical practice in the country.
Sometime before dawn Ida had an inspiration. If the village people were going to wait too long to come to her, she would go to them. She would hitch up a wagon at the hospital and take it out into the dustiest, dirtiest villages she could find. Louisa Hart was back in Vellore, along with her sister Lillian, a competent nurse, and they would be able to share this new workload between them. The plan came together with remarkable speed. A bandy was outfitted with shelves and a folding table, and within two weeks Ida was ready to go out on her first “Roadside,” as she called this new venture.
Ida set out with faithful Salomi at her side. They traveled about five miles along a bumpy track and then stopped near a village. Two men sat by the road, and Ida called to them to come closer.
“We are from the hospital,” she told them. “We want to help sick people. We will be back at the same time next week, and we will stop here. If you know anyone who is sick, tell them to wait for us here.”
The older man’s eye’s lit up. “You will help me?” he said, thrusting out his right hand.
“If I can,” Ida replied as she felt his pulse. She had learned long ago that every diagnosis in India begins with reading the pulse, on the right wrist of a man and the left wrist of a woman.
“I have flies buzzing in my ears,” the man said. “I paid a doctor two annas to remove them, and he showed me a whole handful of flies that he took out of my ear. But he told me he would need another two annas to remove the rest of them. I do not have the money. But could you take the rest of the flies out for me?”
Ida pulled out her medical bag, found a magnifying glass, and peered into the man’s ear, where she saw a pebble embedded against his eardrum. No wonder he was hearing buzzing in his ear. Ida carefully removed the pebble with a pair of tweezers and sent the man on his way marveling at how she had silenced the flies in his ear without removing them.
Ida and Salomi continued on their way, treating patients they found and spreading the word that they would return to the same place in a week’s time. The following week small crowds were waiting at each Roadside stop. The high-caste Hindus waited on one side of the road, and the poor and Muslims waited on the other side. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to share the gospel message, Ida opened every Roadside with prayer and invited people to ask her questions about the Christian faith. By the end of the year, the team of doctors and nurses at the Mary Taber Schell Memorial Hospital were treating approximately thirty thousand outpatients both in the clinic and at the Roadsides.
Once again Ida began to dream. This time it was not a hospital she envisioned but a nursing school to train young Indian women. It would take buildings, teachers, and money to make the nursing school a reality. Suddenly Ida felt the urge to return to the United States, where she could explain her plans for the nursing school and raise money to get it started. And the sooner she got it started the better!
In the summer of 1907 Ida, her mother, and Annie set sail for America. Ida left Mary and the other orphan children in Salomi’s capable care.
Once the women arrived in the United States, Annie went her separate way for a year of fundraising and visiting family, friends, and supporters. Ida and her mother headed to Nebraska for a family reunion on the farm where Ida had spent some of her childhood. It was wonderful to see so many family members again. Her brother Lewis and his wife, Cora, still lived on the farm. As the rest of the family gathered, they borrowed tents to accommodate everyone. All of Ida’s brothers—John, Lewis, Charles, Henry, and Walter—were there, along with their wives and an assortment of children.
Ida met many of her nieces and nephews for the first time, including her namesake, Ida Belle Scudder, the seven-year-old daughter of Lewis and Cora. Little, blond Ida Belle looked a lot like the elder Ida when she was young, but she was much more shy. As the family took cart rides and picnicked by the creek, Ida often found Ida Belle sitting beside her waiting for another story about her aunt’s life and work in India. Ida was amazed at how long the little girl would sit and listen as she described operations and diseases in detail. Perhaps, she told herself, Ida Belle might one day take on her profession as well as her name.
The lazy, sunny days on the farm soon ended, and it was time for Ida to return to New York, where she had enrolled in some postgraduate classes. While she was there, she stayed with Gertrude Dodd, the woman who had financed Annie Hancock’s way to India seven years before. Since that time Ida and Gertrude had written to each other many times, and Ida was eager to see Gertrude in person again.
The three-month course in New York sped by. When it was over, Ida went on a speaking tour of the east coast of the United States and Canada, telling stories and raising money for the new nursing school she hoped to open when she returned.
By the time she got back to New York, Ida had pledges for five thousand dollars toward the school. Better yet, she had met Delia Houghton, a registered nurse who was eager and competent to take on the task of being the nursing school’s first instructor. Ida was delighted that not only was Delia going back to India with her, but Katharine Van Nest, whom Ida had lived with for a time in New York eight years before, and Gertrude had decided to accompany her to India to see conditions there for themselves.
On November 12, 1908, Ida stood at the stern of the SS Cedric as it steamed out of New York Harbor. Beside her on deck were her mother, Annie Hancock, Gertrude Dodd, Katharine Van Nest, and Delia Houghton. As Ida looked at the five women watching New York City slip from view, she smiled to herself. She wondered what six strong women with faith in God and a determination to make a difference in the lives of females in India could accomplish in the months and years ahead.
Chapter 10
An Animal-less Carriage
The voyage to India gave the six women plenty of time to plan, and by the time they reached Madras, preparations were well under way for the Vellore Nursing School. Ida had anticipated some problems getting the school up and running, and she was right. The women had decided to accept only high-school graduates into the program, but few females in India met this requirement. And of the few who met the requirement, most were married as soon as they finished high school or went into the teaching profession. Ida sent word to all of the missions in the area, asking them to find suitable young women to apply for the nursing school.
Slowly applications began to trickle in. About half of them came from Christians, and the rest were from Hindus and Muslims. This suited Ida fine. She wanted the college to be open to women of all faiths. By the end of 1908, the nursing school was fully operating, with fifteen students enrolled.
Eventually Gertrude and Katharine returned to the United States as planned, but they left with a new determination to spread the word about the good work going on at Vellore. Meanwhile Delia, after completing a Tamil language course, turned out to be a capable nursing school director.
Soon Ida was able to turn her attention back to the Roadsides. While Ida had been away in the United States, two of the Roadside stops had evolved into regular clinics, one at Gudiyattam, twenty-three miles away, and one even farther away, at Punganur.
Ida loved this work, but the bumpy bandy ride was a grueling experience, and Ida often prayed for a more efficient way to reach the people. Her answer came in the form of a letter from someone who had heard her speak in the United States. When she opened the letter, Ida read the most amazing news. The writer was sending her an automobile, a Peugeot, so that she could visit the more remote villages with ease.
A Peugeot! It took a while for the idea of getting a motorcar to sink in. While she had been in the United States, Ida had been driven in several of them, but they were new and unknown things to her. She had never seen one in or around Vellore, and she wondered how the local people would take to an “animal-less carriage.”
On September 23, 1909, a huge wooden crate was unloaded at Ida’s door. Inside it was the motorcar—or rather all the parts to construct the motorcar, if someone could be found who knew how to go about putting it together.
Ida wrote to missionaries in Madras, and they found a mechanic who assured everyone that he was capable of putting the Peugeot together. Ida, along with half the town, watched eagerly as the mechanic assembled the car. When it was finished, it had a folding top, hard leather seats, a loud horn, and a one-cylinder engine.
A week later, on September 30, the Peugeot was tested and ready for its first Roadside visit. Ida sat beside Hussain, the driver, while Salomi and a female Bible teacher sat in the backseat, almost hidden beneath all the bags of drugs and bandages. Hussain could not seem to stop swerving, and the canvas bags filled with additional supplies thumped wildly against the sides of the windshield.
A group of field workers farther down the road spotted the car coming and ran off into the field screaming, “The devil is coming! The devil is coming!”
Ida ordered Hussain to stop the car. She ran into the field after the workers, hoping to explain that it was just an oxenless bandy and would not harm them. But the workers were too shocked to listen to her.
Others had the same reaction. At Roadside after Roadside, people fled from the car. Ida found that the only way she could keep her patients in one place long enough to treat them was to stop the car some distance before each Roadside and walk the rest of the way.
Still, Ida was not too discouraged. She hoped that the people would soon come to accept the strange sight of an automobile and that Hussain’s steering precision would quickly improve.
Ida continued her Roadsides, and within a few weeks, the crowds were back. Once they accepted that the car was not going to hurt them, the people were eager to investigate every inch of it. It was not long before the horn was missing, but that did not matter much. Since this was the only motorized vehicle for miles around, no one had any trouble recognizing Ida’s car by the sound of its spluttering engine.
Ida was glad to see that people in the villages understood that the car enabled her to cover more ground in a day and treat more patients. She knew that people appreciated the car every time the Peugeot met its match at the Katpadi Railway Overbridge. This bridge was high, and the car did not have the horsepower to make it more than halfway up the steep incline to the overpass. Each time it wheezed to a stop, nearby bullock drivers and merchants would rush out to push the Peugeot over the hump and watch it coast down the incline on the other side of the bridge.
By Christmas Ida was treating over three hundred people a day at her Roadsides. Many of the patients had never before seen a medical doctor, and they had little idea of how to follow instructions. When Ida gave one man some cotton wadding, he asked if he was supposed to eat it to make his ear better. One woman laughed when Ida washed her hands before performing a roadside operation. “What’s the point of that? Everyone knows your hands will get dirty again,” she said. Ida was patient with the people’s ignorance and took every opportunity to explain to them why they should follow her advice.
