Ida Scudder wanted to leave hot, overcrowded India for the good life. If asked to define the good life, she would have replied, "America and marriage to a millionaire." Her memories of India were ugly. As a small girl she had broken bread during famine and put it in the mouths of children too weak to feed themselves. She had seen tiny corpses lying beside the road. No, India was not the place for her.

Her aspirations changed in a single, terrible night. As she read in her room, a high caste Brahmin stepped onto the verandah. He asked her to come attend his child-wife, who was in labor. The barber women--India's midwives--had done all they could. Without help, the girl would die. Ida replied that she knew nothing about midwifery. Her father was a skilled doctor. She would bring him to the girl as soon as he returned. The Brahmin refused. "She had better die than have a man come into the house," he said.

Ida felt pity for the poor girl. But what could she do? She returned to her book. Again footsteps sounded on the verandah. Was the Brahmin back? Ida ran down. A Mohammedan stood there. "Please," he pleaded. "Come help my wife." She was dying in labor. John Scudder offered to go. The Mohammedan refused. No man outside his family had ever looked on his wife's face. He could not let a foreign male approach her. Ida and John could not change his mind. Ida returned to her room but could take no interest in her book. Again she heard footsteps. To her horror, a third man appeared: a high caste Hindu. He, too, had a young wife dying in labor. Would Ida come?

"I could not sleep that night--it was too terrible,” wrote Ida later. Here ... were three young girls dying because there was no woman to help them. I spent much of the night in anguish and prayer. I did not want to spend my life in India. My friends were begging me to return to the joyous opportunities of a young girl in America, and somehow I felt I could not give that up. I went to bed in the early morning after praying much for guidance. I think that was the first time I ever met God face to face, and all that time it seemed that He was calling me into this work.

Early in the morning I heard the 'tom-tom' beating in the village and it struck terror in my heart, for it was a death message. I sent our servant, who had come up early, to the village to find out the fate of these three women, and he came back saying that all of them had died during the night.... Again I shut myself in my room and thought very seriously about the condition of the Indian women and, after much thought and prayer, I went to my father and mother and told them that I must go home and study medicine, and come back to India to help such women."

Fortunately for Ida, women such as Elizabeth Blackwell had forced a passage into medical school. Ida would be able to study at top notch schools. Her decision to become a medical missionary would not seem implausible to a public already aware of the work of Clara Swain, India's first female medical missionary.

When Ida returned to India, it was as a well-trained doctor. She also had in hand a substantial sum of money to build a women's hospital at Vellore. This had come miraculously:

"Raise money to build a women's hospital in Vellore?" asked Ida. "But I sail for India in a week!"

"We have a letter from Dr. Louisa Hart. She suggests you." The mission leaders waited for Ida's response.

Ida remembered the child brides, pregnant before their bodies were ripe for babies. She thought of women locked behind walls, given nothing to drink in their illness because the priests said it was dangerous. Yes, a women's hospital was needed. "We'll need $50,000 to build a good one," she replied.