The two ladies, whose previous slight acquaintance had ripened
into warmest friendship during their weeks of journeying together,
had hoped that they might be associated together in mission work,
but it was not so to be. Miss Thoburn was appointed to educational
work in Lucknow, and Dr. Swain found that she was to remain in
Bareilly. This appointment gave her the opportunity to begin her
medical work at once, for there were not only the girls'
orphanage, for which Mrs. Thomas had so long desired efficient
medical help, but scores of Christian women who could not go to
the city hospital. In addition to these, there was the class of
fourteen intelligent Christian girls that had for two years been
receiving excellent preparatory training from Mrs. Thomas, who had
fully believed that her prayer for a lady doctor would be answered
and that these girls would yet have the opportunity for the study
of medicine. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were well acquainted with several
of the wealthy and influential natives of the city, and Mrs.
Thomas welcomed the opportunity to introduce her doctor friend to
these homes.
There was no lack of patients for the new doctor; for in addition
to her work in the orphanage and her medical class, calls to
native homes in the city became more and more frequent. At the end
of the first six weeks after her arrival in Bareilly, Dr. Swain's
note book recorded one hundred and eight patients. Her report to
the conference, after a year of such service as she had never
dreamed of, gave the number of patients prescribed for at the
mission house as twelve hundred and twenty-five, and of visits to
patients in their homes, two hundred and fifty.
The young women of the medical class were gaining practice and
experience by caring for the sick in the orphanage and the
Christian village, and sometimes accompanying Dr. Swain to visit
her city patients, and they were also becoming proficient in
compounding and dispensing medicines. This class, begun March 1,
1870, was graduated April 10, 1873, having passed an excellent
examination before two civil surgeons and an American physician,
from whom they received certificates entitling them to practice in
all ordinary diseases.