#history
First Indian Woman Doctor.
Ananadibai Joshy is the first Indian woman to obtain a medical degree
139 years ago. She graduated from the first women’s Medical College in the world.
The three women pictured in this photograph taken on 25 October 1885 , – Anandibai Joshi of India, Keiko Okami of Japan, and Sabat Islambouli of Syria — each became the first licensed female doctors in their respective countries.
They were students at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, USA; one of the few places in the world at the time, where women were allowed to study medicine.
Mallika Rao wrote:
“If the timing doesn’t seem quite right, that’s understandable. In 1885, women in the U.S. still couldn’t vote, nor were they encouraged to learn very much. Popular wisdom decreed that studying was a threat to motherhood.”
How then did three women from around the world, end up studying in America to become doctors?
The credit goes to the Quakers who “believed in women’s rights”, brave enough to set up the WMCP way back in 1850 in Germantown.
It was the first women’s medical college in the world, and immediately began attracting foreign students unable to study medicine in their home countries.
First they came from other countries in North America and Europe, and then from further afar.
Women, like Joshi in India and Keiko Okami in Japan, heard about WMCP, and defied expectations of the society and family, to travel independently to America to apply.
They had to figure out on their own, how to pay for their tuition and board.
Besides the international students, the Medical College also produced America’s first Native American woman doctor, Susan La Flesche. Later African Americans were also admitted as students. Some of them, like Eliza Grier, were former slaves.
According to some historians Kadambari Ganguli was the first Indian woman to graduate in medicine in 1886.
Ayyathan Gopalan (1886-1948) from Thalasseri was the first Malayali to become a graduate in Western Medicine in British Malabar.
His sister Ayyathan Janaki Amma (1878-1945) became the first Malayali woman to qualify as a medical doctor.
T E Punnen is the first Malayali to qualify as a graduate in Western Medicine from Travancore.
His daughter Mary Punnen Lukose created history as the first woman medical graduate in Travancore.
– Joy Kallivayalil.
p.s:
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to receive a medical degree in the USA.
– J.A.
