Since I’ve finished my dissertation (whoop!), I’ve been researching and collecting records related to my next project, on the material history of hearing aids. It’s so easy to get side tracked in the digital collections, especially since there are thousands of wonderful historical materials just waiting for some attention. One incredible distraction for me has been the Drexel University College of Medicine Archives & Special Collections, which holds a remarkable repository on women physicians from the 1850s to 1870s.
Browsing through the photographic collection, I came across one photograph that piqued my interest:
The photo of the three physicians was a memento from the Dean’s reception, dated October 10, 1885. I have hardly come across sources from the late nineteenth-century featuring ethnic women practicing medicine, especially Indian women. So naturally, I started digging a bit into female Indian physicians, beginning with Dr. Anandi Gopal Joshi.
Joshi was the first Hindu Brahmin females to receive an education abroad and obtain a medical degree. Born in 1865 in Kaylan, a small town near Bombay (Mumbai), she was married off at 9 years old to 29 year old postmaster Gopalro (Gopal Vinayak Joshi), a widower. Gopal renamed Joshi, shifting her birth name from Yamuna to Anandi (“the happy one”). He was also a supporter of women’s education and started teaching his young wife shortly after they got married. She eventually learned Sanskrit and English. The marriage completely ideal; there’s sources indicating that Gopal often abused his young wife in order to keep her focused on her education.
In the 1880s, with the help of a Philadelphia missionary, Joshi was sent to the United States to receive an education in medicine, a decision made after the tragic death of her son when she was 14. She enrolled in the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, then the first hospital for women; her thesis was titled Obstetrics among Aryan Hindoos.
Joshi earned her M.D. at 21 years old. In 1886, at her husband’s urging, she returned to India, where she took up a post at the Albert Edward Hospital in Kolhapur. She died a mere year later from tuberculosis.
I’m so fascinated by this story. A young woman, encouraged (if not forced), to educate herself, travel to a faraway land and learn medicine. She, among others, is a voice of our historical past that needs to be heard, and heard frequently. A year after Joshi died, the feminist writer Caroline Wells Healy Dall (1822-1912) penned her biography, The Life of Dr. Anandabai Joshee, a Kinswoman of the Pundita Ramabai. A fictionalized account of Joshi’s life was also written, by S.J. Joshi in 1962, Anandi Gopal. Originally written in Marathi, the novel was eventually adapted into an award-winning play by Ram G. Joglekar.
Joshi certainly wasn’t the only female who studied at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.
Gurubai Karmarkar (d.1932) was the second Indian woman to graduate from the college, in 1892. She eventually returned to Indian and worked at the American Marathi Mission in Bombay.
Dora Chatterjee was also a graduate from the Women’s College, graduating in 1901, being the third Indian women to do so. After graduation, she returned to Hoshyarpur, Punjab, where she worked for a Christian missionary.
This is all I got so far in my adventures through the digital archives. More another time–for now, back to the project!
All photos from Drexel University College Archives & Special Collections