Anandibai Joshi-the first lady doctor of India

Today in any Indian hospital, presence of a lady doctor is not an unusual occurrence. Even the CMO of IIT Bombay hospital is a lady. It is my general perception that in India lady doctors usually takes up softer subjects like gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, pathology, biochemistry - subjects where they are expected to be because they are ladies. Their presence is largely absent from super-specialty subjects namely orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, cardiology etc. Reasons for ladies not joining these may be several. Working mothers may not be able to do odd hours at emergency; male dominated society may be reluctant to get treated by female doctors. Lack of trust on a woman doctor’s capability is still a major mental block of patients. But even then, the present role of lady doctors in India is undeniable. The Indian lady doctors have come a long way. They started the process of entering medical profession in our country in the 2^nd half of nineteenth century which I am going to recount in the following pages. And what a journey it was! Due to initial struggle of few lady doctors in pre-independence era, today we see an emboldened India. This article is a tribute to an undaunted spirit who thought of joining medicine- a typical male bastion.

Let us take a quiz. Who was the first woman doctor in India? Who was the first lady surgeon in India? Dr.Anandibai Joshi became the first lady doctor in 1886 and Dr.Anjali Mukherjee passed M.S. from Calcutta University in 1954. It has to be remembered that introduction of Western medicine in India was not without resistance and took some time to flourish. The prevailing system of Indian medical practice-Ayurveda and Unani could not be overruled. When the British government started medical colleges in 1835 Hindus and Muslims had resistance to the idea of dissection of corpses due to religious reasons and crossing the seas to study medicine in England was regarded as quite sinful. So when Madhusudan Gupta performed dissection in Calcutta Medical College for the first time, the British government saluted him with 21 cannon shots from Fort William, Calcutta.  If it was difficult for Indian men to study allopathic medicine then it was doubly difficult for Indian women to do so.

And Anandibai Joshi holds that honor of being the first woman doctor in India in a time when education for women was unthinkable. Women were not allowed to go outside their home to schools and colleges. They were home-bound and their life revolved around marriage, children and happy domesticity. Purdah system in hindu and muslim households did not allow the girls and ladies of the family to mix with men. Even male doctors were not allowed to treat female patients in many cases. Childbirth was mostly taken care of by untrained midwives. Due to unhygienic practices of these midwives, death of the newborn or the mother was pretty common because of septicemia. In fact, Indian women needed the female doctors badly. But who would be bold enough to go against the male-dominated society to learn medicine?

Anandibai Joshi was one such bold lady. She was born in 1865 in Kalyan in Maharshtra in a staunch Brahmin family. In those days going to school from such a family was equivalent to be outcaste. And following the tradition she was married at the tender age of 9 to Gopalrao Binayak Joshi. Gopalrao was educated, progressive and wanted Anandi to learn English. Gopalrao got a job in Postal department and shifted to Kolhapur. Anandi’s education was going on inside home under the tutelage of her husband. She was extremely lucky to have such a nice husband and without her husband’s active help her medical studies would not have been possible. Being meritorious she learnt Sanskrit, English, Math, History, and Geography in no time. In the meanwhile she gave birth to a baby boy. But the child died due to lack of appropriate medical treatment. Maybe this sad turn of event propelled the couple to make Anandi a doctor. And Gopal left no stones unturned despite his poor income. He kept on writing letters to foreign newspapers to raise funds for Anandi’s medical education. After two years his efforts paid off. A letter to a Christian missionary was published in Christian Review magazine in 1878 which drew the attention of Theodora Carpenter, an American philanthropist. Being a Quaker, Mrs. Carpenter reached out to help her. Anandi went to America in 1883, all alone. Even that was quite a feat at that time for a woman from a Hindu Brahmin family to cross the sinful seas. She started studying medicine in Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (now known as Drexel University College of Medicine) and got her M.D. degree in 1886. In front of the bewildered American audience an Indian lady, all of 22 years, received a medical degree from the first all-women medical college of the world. It cannot be forgotten in this context that women doctors were rare in those days even in developed and rich industrialized countries. World’s first woman doctor was Elizabeth Blackwell who passed degree in Medicine in 1849 in USA. And another Elizabeth- Elizabeth Garrett Anderson passed medicine in England. Sophia Jex-blake started London School of Medicine for women in 1874. Lady doctors were laughed off as ‘Physicians in Petticoats’ and reviled in the world famous medical journal The Lancet. So in view of these difficult times, achievement of Anandibai was nonetheless praiseworthy.

All poised to serve the ill, Anandi came back to India in 1886. But the time after she returned proved unfortunate. She became ill and contracted TB due to long sea journey and harsh living condition in US due to poverty. Though she joined Kolhapur hospital to serve them, she took ill and passed away in February, 1887 at an early age of 22. Her wish of serving the nation by treating the ill died untimely and thus unsung was finished, Anandibai Joshi, the first lady doctor of India. It is a pity that she was such short lived and could not blossom into a full-grown doctor. Later-on S.J.Joshi wrote a historical novel called Anandi Gopal on her life which became immensely popular in Maharashtra. A short film and a TV serial  was made on her life too.

The idea of Indian lady doctors did not trickle-off after Anandibai. History says it gained a momentum. Dr.Kadambini Ganguly became the first lady physician from Calcutta Medical College in 1886.  Bidhumukhi Basu was the first lady to be awarded the MB degree from Calcutta Medical College. Allen D’abrew became first MBBS degree holder from Madras Medical College in 1888. As Lady Dufferin Hospital and Lady Hardinge colleges were established in Calcutta and Delhi in the end of nineteenth century and beginning of twentieth century, more and more ladies got enrolled for studying medicine.

Today a significant number of students of medicine in India are girls. Lady doctors are no way behind their male counterparts. In fact, National Family Planning and Child Health programme would have failed without their participation. But today it is a different world. In urban India women are not prevented for studying or making a career. Girls are given equal opportunity as boys. The world in 1870s was a far cry from present day. In a time when women’s education was unthinkable, Anandibai Joshi stood up, took the challenge and fought against all odds to become a doctor. She justifiably took the first step which paved the way for Indian women to study medicine. A lot more change is needed in the outlook of Indian society so that our women doctors can go on in their mission undeterred and rise to greater heights. Time has come that we should put our full trust on our lady doctors so that they do not shy away from cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, and plastic surgery and restrict their career growth.

Reference :

1. Mohila daktar Bhin groher basinda- a Bengali book on history of Indian women doctors by Chitra Deb. Publisher :- Ananda Publishers,1994.

      ISBN 81-7215-283-3

      2.    Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine, and Historiography

             By Geraldine Hancock Forbes

             Published by Orient Blackswan, 2005

       ISBN 8180280179, 9788180280177

3.   Madhusudan Gupta written by Debashish Bose. Indian J Hist Sci. 1994 Jan-    Mar;29(1):31-40.