per month, with quarters, and they are allowed to have a private practice as well. The Association was to be unsectarian, catholic, and universal. Its aim was—
Firstly.—To provide medical tuition for native female students.
Secondly.—Medical relief, by establishing female hospitals and dispensaries, and the placing of lady doctors in different towns or districts.
Thirdly. Supplying trained nurses and accoucheuses for women and children in hospitals and private houses.
How nobly—in spite of opposition and jealousy—the Association is steadily advancing will be seen from the following:—
There are thirteen lady doctors, twenty-seven assistant surgeons and female medical practitioners, now working in connection with the fund, and 204 pupils studying at the medical colleges, and schools, in India. Boarding houses have also been established for the students, where, under a lady, they can be trained in habits of self-respect, gentleness, and dignity, and where they can be safely protected on their entrance into a comparatively public life, from one of convent-like seclusion. That the female medical students are doing well is conclusively proved by the reports. At Hyderabad, Dr. Lawrie says: "Two of the lady students beat the whole of the male students, and secured the first places in their class at the half-yearly competitive examination."
The Nizam's Government is sending these these two young ladies—one of whom is a Parsee—to England to complete their medical education.
Over twelve lakhs of rupees have been spent in the erection of buildings especially adapted for affording medical relief to native women. The number of women who received medical aid during the year 1890 were 411,000. The princes and chiefs of India from the first, fully recognised the value of Lady Dufferin's noble work, and have warmly supported it. Among the most munificent donors are the Maharaja of Jeypore, the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Maharaja of Ulwar. In 1886 the Begum of Bhopal opened a female dispensary and school, and the Nizam of Hyderabad founded six scholarships and started female medical classes in his State.
The Walter Hospital for Women, Oodeypore.
From a Phototype by R. Hotz, Calcutta.
In 1888 the Dufferin Hospital at Nagpur was opened, having cost Rs. 30,000, all subscribed by Indian nobles; there is also the Walter Hospital at Oodeypore, the Lady Lyall boarding-house for students attending the Lahore Medical College, towards which the Maharaja of Kashmir gave Rs. 50,000; the Victoria Hospital at Kotah, the Lady Dufferin Hospital at Patiala, the Maternity Hospital at Agra, the Ishwari Hospital at Benares, and the Lady Dufferin Zenana Hospital at Calcutta.
It is impossible for Englishwomen to realise the condition and sufferings of their unhappy sisters in India before Lady Dufferin started her grand crusade on their behalf; the thousands of lives yearly sacrificed, the wholesale murder of infants, and the lifelong injuries inflicted on the mothers—who are little more than infants themselves—through the ignorance and the inhuman practices of the dhais (accoucheuses).
Lady Dufferin, when giving me a brief account of her work, was anxious that I should mention the earlier efforts of the
