VELLORE: Floral tributes were paid to Dr Ida Scudder, the founder of the Christian Medical College (CMC), on her 53rd death anniversary here on Thursday.
Denizens of Vellore, led by Mayor P Karithiyayini, visited her grave at the cemetery in Tollgate area and paid their respects.
Ida came to India in 1890 to help her parents from the US in their missionary work.
During her stay here, she was once requested by three men to help their wives in delivery. Not being a doctor, she was reluctant to help and unfortunately, all three women passed away. The incident shook her and Ida, who had planned to get married and settle down in New York, gave up the idea and took up the medical profession.
She became a gynaecologist and was unmarried till she died at the age of 90. What was started by her as a single-bed dispensary with a grant from a New York banker Schell in memory of his wife in 1900, is now a 2,500-bed super-speciality teaching hospital visited by patients from across India.
In 1903, Ida began teaching traditional compounders and six years later in
1909, she started the School of Nursing.
Her dream came true with the founding of a medical school for women in 1918.