Clara A. Swain, M.D.

Description

A short life account of Clara A. Swain, M.D. who is considered as the “first Medical Missionary to the Women of the Orient.” She commenced from the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia and was designated to India where she finally took a mission in a royal palace.

The biography includes: Clara A. Swain, M.D. to The Nawab’s Gift; and First Furlough. to The Last Year of Her Life.

Dr. Clara A. Swain was a doctor and missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was known as the “pioneer woman physician in India,” and along with the “first fully accredited woman physician ever sent out by any missionary society into any part of the Non-Christian world”. Her mission in India necessitated a female doctor to offer excellent medical care to superior social class females, that were spiritually isolated to zenana. Advocated by the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Clara departed America, for Bareilly, India, where she stayed for 27 years of her life giving medical service to women and to young people from sicknesses, at the same time preaching to the locals.

At the final days of her first year in Bareilly, Swain had obtained 17 medical learners, quantifiably trained under her guidance, and had cared for at least, 1,300 patients. in 4 years, she assisted in instituting the first hospital in India for women and young people.

Clara was born in Elmira, New York and brought up in Castile, New York. Her father, John Swain, was of Irish lineage and her mother, Clarisa Seavey, brought New England descent. At 8 years old, Clara enlisted herself in the Methodist Church, a choice that would inspire her aims of presupposing a “Christian profession”. Ensuing her devotional studies, at 21 years old, Clara started educating private students in Castile and afterward resided to Canandaigua, New York to officially educate at a school. There, she got an enthusiasm in medicine by mending for those who are sick.
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