Many new staff members were at the hospital, from Australia, Ireland, England, Canada, and the United States. Ida was particularly pleased to meet Dr. Florence Nichols, the first woman psychiatrist in India. Dr. Nichols told Ida how on her arrival in India she had been at the train station in Madras. She began to despair of getting all her luggage loaded onto the train before it left for Vellore. In a panic she ran to the station master to ask what could be done. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say it was not his problem that a white woman had brought so many things with her to India. Then he casually asked, “Where are you going, anyway?”
Florence replied, “The Vellore Christian Medical College.”
At the mention of these words, the station master snapped to attention. “In that case the train will not leave until all your baggage is on board,” he said emphatically.
“But…I might hold up the train for ten minutes. Some of my bags are still in the car that brought me to the station.”
“No matter,” the station master said, coming out from behind his booth and taking Dr. Nichols by the arm. “I said the train will not leave without you.”
The station master escorted Dr. Nichols to her compartment and kept watch until her last bag was safely stowed on the train. Then he waved a flag at the engineer. As the train began to chug away, he waved at Florence through the open window of the carriage and yelled, “Dr. Scudder saved my life. I fell off a horse, and she operated on me. Greet her for me and tell her there is nothing I would not do for her and her hospital.”
Ida’s eyes misted over as she heard the story. It was good to be home again with the people whom she loved and served. However, there were so many changes that Ida had to keep reminding herself she had been away for four long years. Dr. Robert Cochrane, a Scotsman with more qualifications than Ida, was now principal of the new coeducational medical school. Ida had known that she would not get the job; she did not have enough degrees to satisfy the Indian government. Besides, she was now seventy-four years old. Her role had changed, and she was happy to accept it. Ida resolved to do whatever she could to help get the medical college ready for the inspections that would determine its fitness to be a part of the Indian university system.
Now that Ida did not have the daily weight of running the college resting on her shoulders, she felt a new spring in her step. There was so much else to do.
Chapter 15
Time to Retire
When Ida Scudder turned seventy-five in December 1945, she was still working full days. When Dr. Cochrane went on a business trip to England that same month, Ida was asked to step in once again and become the acting principal and director of the medical college and hospital. She accepted the responsibility with delight. Despite her age, Ida threw herself into her old role. She spent the mornings making hospital rounds and the afternoons studying the budget for the new building projects. In the evenings she hosted small groups of first-year medical students, both men and women, so that she could get to know them all.
When Dr. Cochrane returned in late January, Ida handed control back to him. She knew it was now time to do some serious thinking. She was already ten years beyond retirement age for Reformed Church missionaries, and she knew she could not keep up the strenuous pace of working in the hospital for too long. Besides, when she was at the hospital, many of the patients and staff instinctively looked to her instead of Dr. Cochrane for guidance and instruction. The fact was inescapable: it was time for her to retire.
Ida’s four years spent in the United States had firmly convinced her that her heart lay in India. Not only had she been born there, but also she had lived there for over fifty years. To her it was home. Ida announced her intention to retire in August 1946. Her plan was to move permanently to Hill Top and live there.
At her retirement celebration, Ida insisted that everyone remain positive and look on the bright side of things. She was concerned that if her staff starting telling her how much they would miss her, she would break down in tears for the evening. She happily reminded everyone that, unlike the old days, when it was an arduous train and mule journey to get to Kodaikanal, now it was less than a day away by car. Ida told everyone that she was planning to enlarge her garden at Hill Top, and she invited everyone to visit her.
Ida did not have many belongings to transport up the winding road to her new permanent home. What she did transport were mainly items of furniture that had belonged to her parents and gifts she had been given over the years.
Hill Top was beautiful in August, and Ida settled down to a well-disciplined regimen. In the morning she wrote letters to old students and the many “Friends of Vellore” groups that were springing up around the world. Then, in the afternoon, she and her gardener, Chinnekin, tackled the mammoth task of enlarging the garden. Ida also decided to build a waterfall. The fact that she lived on top of a mountain and there was no water nearby did not deter her! In the evenings she read medical journals and entertained friends.
People flocked to Hill Top to stay with Ida, who welcomed them all. Sometimes the house resembled a hotel, and more than once Ida had to lock herself in the pantry to find a quiet place to write.
During summer, when the population of Kodaikanal swelled in number, it was nothing for Ida to have forty or fifty guests in one day, all wanting to talk with her and tour the beautiful gardens. Everyone marveled at the waterfall, which was a feat of ingenuity and engineering, and ate delicious, fresh meals prepared by Ida’s cook, Sebastian.
The following year, on August 15, 1947, India became an independent nation, and the new government showed just how much progress Indian women had made since Ida had arrived back in the country for good at the turn of the century. A woman was appointed minister of health and another the governor of West Bengal Province.
Much to Ida’s delight, that same year an Indian woman took over the leadership of the hospital and medical school. She was Dr. Hilda Lazarus, a long-time supporter of the work at Vellore. When Dr. Cochrane resigned from his position, Dr. Lazarus was appointed to replace him. It was the fulfillment of all Ida had worked for—Indian women helping themselves and each other. Ida went to the ceremony to welcome Dr. Lazarus to her new position, and she herself was welcomed back with open arms. “Don’t stay away so long next time!” everyone pleaded.
After that Ida did go down to Vellore more often, and every time she went, she marveled at the medical advances being made. She was particularly impressed with Dr. Rambo, an eye specialist who was pioneering a new concept called an eye camp. As head of the Schell Eye Hospital he, like Ida before him, had become very frustrated with the number of incurable cases of blindness he saw. “Why do they wait until it is too late before they come for help?” he bemoaned. Then Dr. Rambo came up with the idea of an eye camp, a kind of specialized Roadside to deal with people with sight problems.
Ida was invited to go along on the first eye camp. She was so eager to do so that she was waiting outside Dr. Rambo’s bungalow an hour before it was time to leave. A “teller of good news” had been sent out to the towns and villages around Gudiyattam several days before to tell anyone with eye disease or blindness that a medical team was coming to give free examinations. If a doctor determined that a person would benefit from an eye operation, the surgery would be done right there the same day.
No one had any idea how many people would respond to such an offer, but as the car neared the tiny branch hospital, the driver had to slow down to a crawl. Over three hundred people were crowding around the gate. Ida helped Dr. Rambo and his team as they set up tables and organized the patients into long lines. One at a time, the people knelt in front of the doctor to have their eyes examined. There was no hope for some of the patients, but many others could have their eyesight saved or restored. These patients had a tag sewn onto their shirts or saris telling their condition and the type of operation they needed.
At the end of a very long morning, the totals were tallied. Fifty-seven people, including many babies and toddlers, would benefit from cataract operations. It was far too many for the branch hospital to cope with, but a mill owner offered his warehouse as an operating theatre. Ida helped as the warehouse was transformed. Operating tables were set up, and a number was added to each patient’s tag, telling the staff the order in which each patient would be operated on.
All of the patients formed a long line, and the processing began. The first nurse shaved a patient’s eyebrows, the second gave anesthetic, and then Dr. Rambo operated. Following the operation a third nurse bandaged up the eye, and then a fourth nurse laid the patients on matting at the far end of the warehouse. Each patient was then watched over while he or she came out from under the anesthetic.
The whole process went like clockwork, and together the members of the team could do six operations an hour. When night fell, there were still many patients to go, so kerosene lanterns were lit and the work continued. Someone offered to take Ida back to Vellore to rest, but she would not hear of it. Things were much too exciting where she was!
When the final surgery was completed, sometime after midnight, fifty-seven bandaged people lay in two neat rows on the warehouse floor. The medical team left behind a cook to supply the patients with food and a nurse to provide care for them for a week, after which the medical team would return to take off the bandages.
When Ida finally did get to bed, she was unable to sleep. She kept thinking of all the lives that had been changed that day, all the children who could now learn to read, all the women who could now cook and sew for their families, and all the men who could provide for their own families once again. Fifty-seven operations had been carried out that day, but better yet, Dr. Rambo planned to hold eye camps twice a week.
A few months after the first eye camp, Ida once again descended from Hill Top, this time to meet a brilliant young surgeon named Paul Brand. Like Ida, Dr. Brand had been born to missionary parents in India and had come back to help change the lot of the poorest people. He had chosen a challenge close to Ida’s heart—leprosy. The Vellore Christian Medical College had just entered a partnership with the new government to research the sulphone drugs that were showing such promise in the treatment of the disease.
Ida had come to witness the results of Dr. Brand’s first operation to restore movement to the hand of a twenty-four-year-old Hindu man. The man’s hand had been paralyzed by leprosy. Ida listened as Dr. Brand modestly explained that he had discovered one set of arm muscles that were unaffected when a patient became paralyzed. The new operation, which Dr. Brand was pioneering, attempted to transplant parts of those good muscles and tendons into the “clawed” hand so that it would work again.
The only sound that could be heard in the room was the rhythmic sawing of plaster as the cast was removed from the man’s hand and arm. The bandages underneath were meticulously unwound, and then Dr. Brand massaged the patient’s hand. Finally he stepped back so that Ida could see.
“Go ahead and use it,” Dr. Brand said to the Hindu man.
The young man held his hand to his face and then slowly began to wiggle his fingers. He stared at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, and then he reached down and gingerly picked up a piece of the plaster cast.
A cheer went up from the nurses and doctors in the room. Like Ida, they all knew they had witnessed a medical milestone.
The young man shook with sobs as he turned to Dr. Brand. “This new hand you give me,” he said, “is not mine. It belongs to your God, who made this miracle possible.”
