Running head: BIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT

Biography Assignment Ashley Wolcott Northwest University

Author Note Ashley Wolcott, Buntain School of Nursing, Northwest University Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ashley Wolcott, Buntain School of Nursing, Northwest University, 5520 108th Ave NE, Kirkland WA 98033. E-Mail: Ashley.wolcott11@northwestu.edu

BIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT Reason for missionary work

Miss Clara Swain was the first woman and womens doctor to go into India. Clara Swain was first a teacher but felt the profession left her wanting more out of a career. Her students lacked the motivation and zeal for education that she possessed. It was not until a close friend of Miss Swains wrote her a letter stating she was dying and wished for someone to take over her medical practice, that Clara entertained the idea. She continued to teach after receiving the letter but still felt unfulfilled with the profession. After much time dedicated to prayer she sent her application to the Womens Medical College in Philadelphia. She was accepted and soon started her education there in 1865. Clara was older than most people who entered the medical profession because she began her medical training when she was thirty one years old. While in her last term at college she received a letter from the Womens Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Faith. This letter called her to India to become the first womens physician to enter the country. Her first response asked the Womens Society to give her three months to think about the choice and by then she would have graduated. This was a time of anguish for Clara, she spent much time in prayer and at church services searching for meaning. She felt called to go abroad and to heal people, and ultimately God put it on her heart to accept the call into India. When her family asked why she decided to go, she responded, It is Gods call. I must go. Places and Environments Clara Swain MD arrived in India in 1869 and was housed in a girls orphanage started by two American men and their wives in the city of Bareilly. J.L. Humphrey and Ralph Peirce, both men had since left the place because of political unrest that made it unsafe for them to be there previously. Miss Swain began work there the very next morning after arriving at the orphanage, starting with the girls who attended the orphanage. In Bareilly there was a small town full of Christian converts, there was a mission house where short term missionaries would stay, that

BIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT turned into a make shift clinic. This house she stocked with remedies of her own making and some she had shipped from home. Her books, supplies, and teaching models, a few skeletons,

were all held in the missionary house. She was also called upon by people in neighboring parts of the town to make house calls to the very ill. She packed a bag of supplies and walked to the home, which she described as very small, dark, and containing sparse possessions. She also made house calls for the higher caste members who would never go to the mission house where lower caste members were. Later in her practice she was able to obtain a small three bedroom house in the Christian village of converts and made that the main clinic of practice. She allowed one room to be kept for patients needed longer stays and treatments. Within six months of moving the clinic to the house, it was inadequate and bursting at the seams. This is when Clara started dreaming of a hospital and put her mind to work on how to obtain the land to purchase with the support of the Womens Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Faith. Next to the orphanage there was a forty acre piece of land owned by a Nawab, a powerful landowner in India. The Nawab was a strict Muslim and Clara was told he would never sell the land to her. She arranged to meet with the Nawab and ask him to buy just one acre of land she prayed to God Please, God unbend his heart. Let him give us just an acre! To her initial disappointment the Nawab said it was not for sale, but he would simply give her the full forty acres with the mansion on the property for the noble cause of providing medical care to women and children. In December of 1871 Clara swain was given full rights to the forty acres. Clara first used the mansion as the hospital but knew it would not suite the women she saw there long term, and thus plans for a hospital building began right away. Adjoined to the hospital there was to be a dispensary with six examination rooms, an operating room, an office and a lecture hall, for

BIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT Clara to teach Indian medical students. The hospital opened its doors on January 1, 1874, the first hospital for women in the whole of Asia. Clara spent faithful years working here until in 1885 she was asked by a Rajah to visit his wife. Upon arriving in Khetri where the Rajah lived he asked her to stay at the palace and care for the women there. She worked in the palace attending to the women within the palace and the women outside the gates of the palace until 1896. She then sailed home to America where she stayed retired until 1906. In 1906 she made her last journey back to India to visit the place where it all began. The environment is described throughout the book as very hot reaching the 120 degree

mark in the summer. During the fall it is very wet and several instances of floods are mentioned in the history of Dr. Swain. The roads were dusty and unpaved, and people lived in a climate of the caste system. Dr. swain attended to the Rajah, as well as beggars with no possessions. Work of Clara Swain Clara first started her work in the orient treating simple things such as fevers, colds, sore eyes, abscesses, worms and other ailments. She went on to treat things such as cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, famine, small pox, ophthalmia, While she was still at the orphanage she started a medical school teaching some native Indian women the practice of medicine. After the hospital opened Dr. Swain was diligent in working towards opening up a church in the compound of the hospital through the work of several missionaries this became a reality. When Clara started working as a doctor at the hospital she had helped build she incorporated a wide variety of medical skills including, helping with surgery and working with maternal health. All the while she continued to evangelize to the Muslim and Hindu women of India that she treated, as well as the people in the villages around the hospital compound. When Dr. Swain moved to the Rajahs palace she focused her care mostly on pediatric health of the Rajahs children as well as maternal

BIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT and midwife skills for the Rajahs wife. While there she was able to teach the Rajahs children

and wife about the bible and Jesus Christ. When her time in India had come to a close because of health concerns Clara continued to rally support for the Clara Swain Hospital back in the United States through the Womens Foreign Missionary Society. Reflection on the Missionarys work I am encouraged by the work of Miss Swain. She was a bold woman and proved women can go into the world, even where Americans have not been before, and give both spiritual and medical healing. I identify with her story on many levels because I have the goal of doing nursing work in Haiti at a medical clinic. I am inspired that she was able to make such progress for the people of India and especially the women. I take that and parallel it to the people of Haiti where women are sexually violated often, women become mothers at a young age, and there is no medical knowledge about safe sexual practices, or sexually transmitted diseases. There is also a lack of maternal care which was a problem that Clara dealt with also. One thing I took from Claras adventure was how she always sought Gods will in everything taking diligent time to ask for his blessing on the decision she was making. She listened for the guidance of the Holy Spirit and she moved when the Holy Spirit prompted her to. This is something that I want to model. Too often I find myself want to change everything drastically thinking my way is better, rather than consulting the Holy Spirit for guidance. I am also encouraged that a woman was able to go into a culture where women were mostly quiet and subservient and was able to be a boisterous woman with goals who was respectful but not afraid to stand up for what she wanted and needed. She was able to sit with Hindu diplomats, whose own wives had to keep covered and silent, and openly discuss property, and her goals as both a Christian and a doctor.

BIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT References Wilson, D. C. (1968). Palace of healing; the story of Dr. Clara Swain, first woman missionary doctor, and the hospital she founded. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.