Tamil Nadu Timeline

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Ida Scudder opens a dispensary in Vellore

· Vellore

Ida Scudder opens a dispensary in Vellore
Unknown author, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Ida Scudder, an American medical missionary, started a dispensary with one bed in Vellore, from which the Christian Medical College grew.

Ida Scudder belonged to a family of American missionary doctors working in India. She had watched women die in childbirth because custom barred male doctors from attending them, and this led her to qualify in medicine in the United States. Back in Vellore, she opened a one-bed dispensary in 1900. Two years later, in 1902, she put up the Mary Taber Schell Memorial Hospital for women with 40 beds, and she started training women as compounders in 1903 and as nurses in 1909. From these beginnings the Christian Medical College, Vellore developed.

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  3. 1915

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  4. 1918

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  5. 1942

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