Ida Scudder

IDA SCUDDER

1870-1960

Medical Missionary to India

Ida Sophia Scudder was born in India to John, Jr. and Sophia Scudder. Ida’s grandfather, John Scudder I was the first American medical missionary.  His seven sons all followed him to became medical missionaries in India.  When Ida was six, she had to help her family feed malnourished Indian children because of a famine. She never forgot that experience. As she left that country with its foul smells a year later, she vowed never to return.  After finishing a seminary for girls at the recommendation of Dwight L. Moody, Ida was summonsed by her father to come to India because her mother was ill and needed help.  Once there, she took over the responsibilities of her mother and oversaw the daily running of the boy’s’ boarding school her parents operated. Her father ran a medical clinic besides. 

The culture in India at the time forbade a male doctor to treat a female.  So Dr. Scudder was limited to treating the men in the Vellore area.  One night, three different men came to their home asking Ida to come help deliver a baby.  All three were difficult births and the men knew their wives would die if Ida didn’t come.  Ida implored the men to allow her father to help because she had no training, but they left with heavy hearts knowing a man could never treat their wives.  All three women died.  Her father told her, “If there’s nothing you can do to remedy a bad situation, the wisest thing to do is to forget about it.”   But that night, she realized there WAS something she could do about it!   She soon packed her bags and sailed back to America to attend medical school. She graduated from Cornell University Medical School the first year it was open to women.  

Ida returned to Vellore, South India and began practicing medicine.  She performed her first operation with no helper but the butler’s wife, yet in time she became noted as a surgeon. By 1906, the number of patients she treated annually had risen to 40,000.

Through the fifty-five years Dr. Ida Scudder served in India, she started a school of nursing for Indian women and then a medical school to train women to become doctors.  As ground was broken for the hospital, she realized it was a fulfillment of a prayer her grandfather had prayed many years before.  The first seventeen girls she trained as doctors all passed their tests with flying colors while men from other medical schools in India had a 20% success rate.  She soon had to increase the size of her hospital, added an orphanage because of the children abandoned because of superstition, and had many medical outposts where thousands were treated.  

During her lifetime she saw her medical center become one of the largest in all of Asia. The departments multiplied to include radiation-oncology under her niece and name sake, Dr. Ida Belle Scudder, thoracic surgery, nephrology, leprosy surgery and rehabilitation under Dr. Paul Brand, microbiology, rural work, mental health, ophthalmology, and many others — a list of “firsts” in India equal only to her abounding energy, indomitable will, and consecrated purpose. Ida traveled to America many times to raise funds for medical buildings or to recruit doctors and nurses.  On her last trip, she reached Cairo and flew in her first flight from there to India.  She said, “Now that is the way to travel.  I have finally found a mode of transportation that’s fast enough for me.”  

Ida died at the age of 90 in Vellore, India. The Scudder family devoted more than 1,100 combined years to Christian medical missions in South India by 42 members of at least five generations.

Ida’s work continues today. One hundred years since she built the first hospital, the hospital has a staff of 5000 and serves 80,000 people annually.  Her medical school is now known as the top college in India.