"Before entering into the subject, I should like to write a few words
about myself. I am the first member of our community to attain English
education. Almost all my relatives (I talk only about the female members
of our community) have learnt only to write and read our mother language
Telugu.
"When I entered the high school course I had a poor ambition to study
medicine. I do not know whether it was due to the influence of my
brother-in-law who is a doctor, or whether it was due to our
environments. Near our house was a small hospital. It was doing
excellent work for the last five years. Now unfortunately the hospital
has been closed for want of stock and good doctors. From that hospital I
learnt many things. I was very intimate with the doctors. I admired the
work they were doing.
"My father had a faithful friend. He was a Brahman. He realized from his
own experience the want of lady doctors. He had a daughter, his only
child, and she died for want of proper medical aid. Whenever my father's
friend used to see me he used to ask my father to send me to the Medical
College, for he was quite interested in me, like my own father. After
all, as soon as I passed the School Final Examination, it was decided
that I should take up medicine, but at that time my mother raised many
an objection, saying the caste rules forbid it. I left the idea with no
hope of renewing it and joined the Arts College. I studied one year in
the College. Then luckily for me my father and his friend tried for a
scholarship.
"Luckily again, it was granted by the Travancore Government.
"I am not going to close before I tell a few words of my short
experience in the College. As soon as I came here I thought I wouldn't
be able to learn all the things I saw here. I looked upon everything
with strange eyes and everything seemed strange to me, too. But, as the
days passed, I liked all that was going on in the College. The study--I
now long to hear more of it and study it. Now everything is going on
well with me and I hope to realize my ambition with the grace of the
Almighty, for the 'thoughts of wise men are Heaven-gleams.'"
[Illustration: BETTER BABIES Throughout India. Feeding and Weighing]
You ask, what of the future? What will these young doctors bring to
India's need? How much will they _do_? Might one dare to prophesy that
in years to come they will at least in their own localities make stories
like the following impossible?
A woman still young, though mother of seven living children, is carried
into the maternity ward of the Woman's Hospital. At the hands of the
ignorant mid-wife she has suffered maltreatment whose details cannot be
put into print, followed by a journey in a springless cart over miles of
rutted country road. She is laid upon the operating table with the
blessed aid of anaesthetics at hand; there is still time to save the
baby. But what of the mother? Only one more case of "too late."
Pulseless, yet perfectly conscious, she hears the permission given to
the relatives to take her home, and knows all too well what those words
mean. The Hospital has saved her baby; her it cannot save. Clinging to
the doctor's hand she cries:
"Oh, Amma, I am frightened. Why do you send me away? I must live. My
little children,--this is the eighth. I don't care for myself, but I
must live for them. Who will care for them if I am gone? Oh, let me
live!"