One opportunity came soon after Christmas when the Peugeot broke down near Elavampadi, a village where Ida had not stopped before. Realizing that she would have to get the mechanic from Madras to fix the problem, Ida walked into Elavampadi to hire a bandy to take her to visit patients. The normally shy inhabitants beckoned Ida into their homes to show her the illness that afflicted many of them. Ida knew what it was right away: the guinea worm, a two to three-foot-long parasite that gets into the bloodstream and eats its way through the flesh to the outside to lay its eggs. The area around the guinea worm’s exit point becomes swollen and abscessed, and Ida could see the thin white worm writhing just beneath the skin of some people.
Appalled as she was, Ida tried to keep smiling and promised to come back the following week to show the people how to rid their town of the worm. Many of the people of the village found it hard to believe that there was a cure for this thing that had been a scourge for generations. But when Ida returned the next week, they welcomed her.
Ida did not come back alone. She had made the guinea worm the subject of a nursing school lecture, and each of the students had drawn up a chart to show how the worm continues its cycle of infecting humans. On this visit Ida brought along with her the top student to explain the guinea worm to the people of Elavampadi, who had all gathered in the schoolhouse to listen.
It was simple, really. The worm larvae bred in water, and when people drank this infected water, the tiny worms entered the body and continued to grow. When the student nurse had given her presentation, Ida stood up and beckoned to two small boys in the front row. She handed them each an empty beaker and said, “Here, go to the village’s two wells and collect a cup full of water from each and bring it back to me.”
The two boys raced off and returned several minutes later with water from both wells. Ida looked in the beakers and nodded.
“I will pass these around,” she said. “If you look very carefully, you will see tiny white bugs moving in the water. These are really the baby worms, and drinking this water is how they get into your bodies.”
She waited for several minutes while all those gathered dutifully examined the beakers and exclaimed that they could, in fact, see something wiggling around in them.
When everyone had examined the beakers, Ida went on. “There are two ways to get rid of the worms in the water,” she began. ”One way is to boil the water, but it would take a lot of firewood, and I know that you do not have much of that here. The other way is to take a clean piece of cloth”—she paused to pull a handkerchief from her pocket—“and pour the well water through it. The cloth will catch all the worms. Then lay the cloth in the sun to kill the worms.”
Several people started talking at once, and the meeting broke into small groups. But Ida hoped that she and the nursing school student had made their point. Straining the water was such a simple thing to do, yet it would prevent so much infection and even some deaths.
The following week Ida was delighted to learn that there were no new outbreaks of guinea worm in Elavampadi and that villagers were reminding each other to strain the water.
It was a good outcome, but since there were many other times when Ida felt powerless to break through ancient Indian traditions, she tried to find other ways around them. Hindus in particular felt it was wrong to give anyone with a fever a drink of water, which meant that some patients actually died of thirst in their own homes. Ida got tired of pleading with the people to change their ways and started prescribing large quantities of “medicine” for patients with fever. She made the medicine by mixing a tiny amount of quinine in a pitcher of water. The quinine gave the water a bitter, medicinal taste. Then, for added effect, Ida added a few drops of potassium permanganate to turn the liquid a purple color. Soon some of the worst cases of dehydration were being cured by cup after cup of this magic “medicine.”
At times villages were closed to Ida because the Hindus living in them were of high caste and did not want to be polluted by her touch. Again Ida tried to be patient and prayed for the right opportunity to break down the prejudice against her.
One village that was closed to her was Lathery. Even though Ida often stopped on the outskirts of the village, no one came to greet her until one February day when, much to Ida’s surprise, eight men approached the car. Between them they were leading a sick bullock!
Knowing that a bullock could bring in the only income for a family, Ida agreed to examine it. This proved difficult, because every time she approached the huge animal, it stamped its feet and flared its nostrils. After several unsuccessful attempts, the men came to the rescue. They flipped the bullock over on its side and sat on it while Ida did her examination. She spotted a tumor in the outer ear and quickly removed it over the protests of the bullock. As soon as Ida was done, the bullock roused itself to its feet and tugged to get away from her.
All that week Ida wondered whether the bullock was still alive and making a good recovery. At the next Roadside, Hussain stopped the car at the outskirts of Lathery. Many people came out to welcome Ida, yelling that the bullock was in fine health and that they had several people who needed help too. Ida was delighted that a sick bullock had made a way for another village to be open to medical treatment and the gospel, which she always shared with her patients.
The work continued to expand, and by the end of 1910, Ida was exhausted. The mission board stretched the few doctors it had as far as possible, and Louisa Hart was reassigned to Madanapalle, leaving forty-year-old Ida to carry on alone at the hospital and Roadsides. By the time summer arrived, Ida had to admit that something drastic needed to be done about the situation. There was no way for her mission board, or any other mission board, for that matter, to supply enough doctors to meet the needs of the Indian people.
As Ida traveled to Kodaikanal to attend a medical conference, a question formed in her mind. What if she started a medical college to train women doctors at Vellore? All the way up the mountain, Ida mulled over the idea. Part of her knew that it was outrageous to think of a medical college when everyone was stretched to the limit trying to run the hospital and nursing school. But another part of her believed that if it could be done, it could help solve the current shortage of doctors and train Indians for generations to come.
Ida finally made up her mind when she visited her father’s grave. She asked herself what he would have advised her to do, and she felt sure that he would have told her to reach for the stars, that Jesus promised that people could move mountains if they only believed.
Once Ida had made up her mind to pursue a medical school for women, her next challenge was to work out how to make it happen. She decided to speak her mind at the Kodaikanal Missionary Medical Conference, an interdenominational meeting of foreign doctors who served in southern India. When the day of the meeting arrived, Ida could hardly contain herself. She was certain that everyone should work together to see a medical training center started.
When the chairman of the meeting asked for comments, Ida jumped to her feet and announced her idea. She watched as eyebrows were raised and other doctors began whispering to each other. When she had given all the reasons she could think of for a new college, she sat down beside her cousin Lew Scudder, who leaned over and spoke softly to her.
“I wish you had talked to me first, Ida,” Lew began. “Really, I don’t see how your idea is practical. All of the mission boards are short on money, and none of them will want to put what they have into an interdenominational project, I am sure of that.”
A doctor to Ida’s right joined in. “Women doctors? Even if you did get the money, it’s impossible. Indian women won’t become doctors. Their families won’t let them. Ida, be reasonable. There are already seven medical colleges for men in South India. Train your nurses and leave it at that,” he said.
Ida tried not to take such remarks personally. She had expected opposition, but deep down it still stung. Only two doctors, the only other women in the room, encouraged her idea, and together the three of them were able to push for a committee to study Ida’s suggestion.
The committee was scheduled to research the proposal and report back to the conference during the summer of the following year, 1912. Ida was impatient to get something started sooner, but she contented herself with walking around the area that she felt would be a good site for the new college. The site was about four miles south of Vellore, on the Arni road. For some reason no one lived or farmed in the lush valley nestled between rocky hills. Ida loved the spot, especially the backdrop—a majestic mountain named Kailasa.
As Ida walked over the land and prayed for the college, she could imagine tall buildings with wide verandas and students weary from study gazing out picture windows at the magnificent scenery.
It was a restless year for Ida, who kept busy opening a tuberculosis sanitarium at Punganur, took on the responsibility of several more babies and abandoned children, and expanded the hospital from forty-three beds to sixty. But always, in the back of her mind, was the question of how the committee was doing and what its findings would be.
Finally the year passed, and during the summer of 1912, Ida received the answer she had prayed for but hardly dared believe. With the constant encouragement of the other two female doctors, the committee had agreed that a union medical college for women in South India was a good idea.
Ida did not allow herself to get too excited, however. It was a small beginning. The committee still had to approve a location for the college, obtain permission from the government, and then convince four struggling denominational mission boards to work together. And then there was the matter of raising the money needed to build the new college and recruit staff and students for it.
Most people, even Ida’s mother, tried to convince Ida to drop the whole idea. Mrs. Scudder told Ida that she was already carrying the workload of three doctors. But Ida was consumed with thoughts of a medical college for women. When she shut her eyes, she could see lines of women in white saris receiving their diplomas and then going out in their hundreds to work among the women of India. Yes, she could see it all, but how was she going to make it happen?
Chapter 11
“So You Are the Woman?”
Although Ida dreamed of a medical school, she was realistic enough to know that it could take years to happen. In the meantime there was an urgent need for more hospital space. Ida set her sights on that problem. She visited government officials in Madras and asked them for a grant to add 150 more beds. The officials turned down her request, explaining that they gave grants only to educational institutions, not to hospitals. Ida thought this was ridiculous. To her the hospital, the Roadsides, the outlying clinics—all played a vital role in educating rural Indians about their health. And what of the nurses who trained in the hospital? Eighteen had graduated and now worked full-time at the hospital.
Ida returned several times to Madras to press her point, and eventually the government relented. The officials promised that the government would fund one third of the amount needed to enlarge the hospital, up to a maximum of twenty thousand dollars. Ida was ecstatic. Now all she had to do was raise the matching forty thousand dollars on her next furlough.
More good news followed. The mission board of the Reformed Church voted to buy the land necessary to expand the existing hospital. And in May 1914, at a conference of the South India Medical Association, four denominations voted to work together to one day build and run a medical school for women. The school was to be located in Vellore, with Ida as its principal. The funds to start the new venture would be raised in the United States and Great Britain.
