Talk of the Gown
Dr. Scudder’s Legacy A hospital in India founded by one of Weill Cornell Medicine’s first female alumni is a ‘transformative’ destination for today’s global health students
Ida Scudder, MD 1899
unforgettable experienceS: Seen in images from their time in Vellore are (from top) Madelon Finkel, PhD (at right); Shobana Ramasamy ’19; Bella Vishnevsky, MD ’17; and Rachel Rosenthal, MD ’17 (at left).
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Photos: Scudder, Christian Medical College; all others provided
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he tale of the “three knocks in the night” has become legend in the medical community of Vellore, India, and beyond. Visiting her missionary parents in 1890 after graduating from a Massachusetts women’s seminary, Ida Scudder watched helplessly as, one after another, three men sought aid for their wives, who were in mortal danger during childbirth. Scudder’s physician father was willing to attend them—but their husbands, following strict religious and cultural prohibitions against women being seen by unrelated males, refused the aid. Scudder, having no medical training, could do nothing. The next morning, she was devastated to learn that all three young mothers had died. For Scudder, those three knocks were a call from God. She abandoned her presumed path—marriage and children in the U.S.—and ultimately joined Cornell Medical College’s first class, earning an MD in 1899. Returning to Vellore, she went on not only to treat thousands of patients but to found nursing and medical schools for women (which became coed in the 1940s), a thriving mobile clinic system, and a medical center and teaching hospital that has grown into one of the largest and most respected in South Asia. As one book on American missionaries notes: “In many ways, she was to India in her time what Mother Teresa was three decades later.” Over the past 118 years, millions of patients and their families have benefitted from Scudder’s legacy. But it wasn’t until a decade ago that her alma mater connected with the institutions—run under the umbrella of what is now known as Christian Medical College (CMC)—that Scudder nurtured in Vellore, a city of more than a halfmillion people in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. Accepting an invitation to visit CMC in 2006, Madelon Finkel, PhD, professor of healthcare policy and research and director of the Office of Global Health Education, was struck by the tireless dedication of its staff, many of whom are CMC alumni. “I immediately fell in love with the place,” says Finkel, who now serves as secretary of the board of CMC. “There was something about it that I can’t describe. It was magical. I went as a jaded New Yorker, but I came back changed.” In addition to establishing a successful screening program for cervical cancer at CMC, Finkel has sent numerous students to do research and clinical work there. As she puts it: “I tell them, ‘I can’t explain in words what you’re going to experience, but you will be transformed. You’ll become a more compassionate individual and a more compassionate physician. You’ll see diseases that people shouldn’t necessarily get or die of, but they do. You’ll see things that may be upsetting—but you’ll also see the dedication of physicians who literally come back after dinner every night to continue seeing patients. The city of Vellore is chaotic—there are people, traffic, and animals in the streets at the same time—yet when you enter
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healthy haven: Christian Medical College’s busy main hospital (at left) and family medicine clinic
the medical center, it’s an oasis of calm.’ ” with the patients she met while shadowing physicians and conductRising second-years have spent summers in Vellore doing public ing research into clinical measures of how morbid obesity—a health research, while fourth-years have gone on four- to six-week skyrocketing problem in the region—impacts quality of life. “It clinical rotations. The latter group includes Rachel Rosenthal, MD helped them feel comfortable enough to open up to me,” she says ’17, who went there during her last semester at WCM and is now of her language fluency. “It was more than just, ‘Here’s a physician,’ a pediatrics intern in Los Angeles. “I had this idea of what a more it was, ‘Here’s someone who can help facilitate my care.’ That was ‘developing’ part of the world would be like, but the main medical a beautiful gift to have.” center has every specialty you can imagine,” she says. “It’s a huge Since Finkel first visited Vellore, she has returned annually to complex, and thousands of patients flow in and out every day. The continue her cervical cancer work, which she has published in volume, compared to what I was used to, was almost unfathomthe Asia-Pacific Journal of Clinical Oncology and presented at global able.” In addition to shadowing mentors in child and adolescent health conferences worldwide. In October, WCM will—for the first psychiatry at the hospital, Rosenthal spent time in the mobile clintime—host the annual Dr. Ida S. Scudder Humanitarian Oration, ics that treat patients in rural areas outside Vellore. “The community co-sponsored by the Office of Global Health Education and the CMC program was unlike anything I’d experienced—the way they were Vellore Foundation. (The speaker is Roger Glass, MD, PhD, associmeeting patients in their homes, schools, or other gathering places to ate director for international research at the NIH and director of provide long-term monitoring for chronic illnesses, without placing its Fogarty International Center.) And this summer, Finkel hosted the significant burden on patients of having to come into the hospital,” says Rosenthal. “Seeing ‘ I had this idea of what a more “developing” part of the how diseases we have here—hypertension, diabetes, some childhood illnesses—are managed in world would be like, but the main medical center has different settings that have access to different every specialty you can imagine,’ says Rachel Rosenthal, levels of resources was really educational.” Like Rosenthal, Bella Vishnevsky, MD ’17, MD ’17. ‘It’s a huge complex, and thousands of patients was drawn to attend WCM in part because of its flow in and out every day. The volume, compared to strong global health offerings. Now an anesthewhat I was used to, was almost unfathomable.’ siology intern at Duke, she has vivid memories of her time in Vellore, including making house calls in rural villages and impoverished urban a professor from CMC, Reena George, MD, who was researching neighborhoods. During her time in the main hospital’s anesthethe early history of medical education in Vellore. “It’s wondersiology department, she was struck by how the physicians—well ful that this connection could be renewed,” says George, head of aware that their patients often pay out of pocket—were careful to CMC’s palliative care unit. “From an intercultural, interdisciplinprescribe the most affordable drugs. “It’s great to see how you can ary perspective, it’s good when the strength and resources of two provide amazing care while keeping in mind a cost-efficient practice institutions in very different contexts come together to understand model,” says Vishnevsky, who also shadowed oncologists treating a healthcare needs and delivery. You realize that wherever you prachigh volume of patients. tice, there is not just one way of doing things. Wherever we work, When Shobana Ramasamy ’19 spent a summer doing public there are always new things to discover, as we try to blend creativhealth research as a rising second-year, her experience was distinct ity, competence, and compassion to serve our patients.” n from that of most visiting students. With family roots in the same — Beth Saulnier Indian state, she grew up speaking Tamil and could communicate
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