Ida S. Scudder
Ida Sophia Scudder ( born December 9, 1870 Empire India, † May 24 1960 in Kodaikanal, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, Indian Union) was a force acting in present-day Tamil Nadu in South India, American physician and missionary who made up of a missionary family came Reformed Church in America.
Life
Scudder was born in South India as a child and a grandchild for the past two generations in Ceylon and India working as doctors and missionaries family. In her youth she was an eyewitness of the Great Famine 1877-1878 and was confronted by the rampant diseases such as bubonic plague in India, cholera and poverty. At the invitation of the missionary Dwight Lyman Moody was at Northfield Seminary in Northfield (Massachusetts ), USA trained.
1890 Scudder returned to her parents' household in Tindivanam in the Madras Presidency back to help her father. There she had the dramatic experience that they are within one night at birth could not help more women and they died. My mind was made up then that she wanted to learn the profession of the doctor in order to help the women after their return to India can.
Scudder began her medical studies in Philadelphia and then moved to New York City. There she made history as one of the first women in 1899 graduated as physician at Weill Cornell Medical College at Cornell University. She went with a scholarship to set up a hospital and other donations that could collect with the help of the Danish Missionary Society, in 1900 back to Vellore in South India. It began with very modest means and could Mary Taber Schell Hospital 1902 open.
College and Hospital
Over the years matured Scudder's idea of setting up a training center for midwives and female medical staff. In the first year of training in 1918, there were 151 applicants ready for the Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore, which was supported in the early years of the Reformed Church in America. 1928, with land in Bagayam was selected above Vellore for the training facility, where do the campus of the University Hospital today. On several trips to the U.S. Scudder was able to collect large sums of donations. After the opening of the college in 1945 for male candidates for several Missionary Society were added as a supporter. The hospital is now with 2,000 beds, the largest Christian Hospital in the world.