he lives of hundreds of Indian women physicians? It
is the only way that the message of the Good Physician, His healing for
soul and body, may penetrate those village fastnesses of dirt, disease,
and ignorance. One hundred and sixty women doctors at present try to
minister to India's one hundred and sixty millions of women, shut out by
immemorial custom from men's hospitals and from physicians who are men.
"What are these among so many?" What can they ever be except as they may
multiply themselves in the persons of Indian messengers of healing?

Small Beginnings.

And so, in July, 1918, the Vellore Medical School was opened, under the
fostering care of four contributing Mission Boards, and with the
approval and aid of the Government of Madras. "Go ahead if you can find
six students who have completed the High School Course," said the
interested Surgeon General. Instead of six, sixty-nine applied;
seventeen were accepted; and fourteen not only survived the inevitable
weeding out process, but brought to the school at the end of the first
year the unheard of distinction of one hundred per cent, of passes in
the Government examination. That famous first class is now in its Senior
Year, and by the time this book comes from the press will be scattering
itself among thirteen centres of help and health.

And so, in rented buildings, the Medical School started life. If ever an
institution passed its first year in a hand-to-mouth existence, this one
has. Short of funds save as mercifully provided by private means; short
of doctors for the staff; short of buildings in which to house its
increasing student body, for it has grown from fourteen to sixty-seven;
short, in fine, of everything needed except faith and enthusiasm and
hard work on the part of its founders, it has yet gone on; the girls
have been housed, classes have been taught, examinations passed, and the
first class is ready to go out into the world of work.

Just here perhaps one brief explanation should be made. These girls will
not be _doctors_ in the narrowly technical sense, for the Government of
India reserves the doctor's degree for such students as have first taken
a college diploma and then on top of it a still more demanding medical
course of five years. These students will receive the degree of Licensed
Medical Practitioner (L.M.P.) which authorizes them to practise medicine
and surgery and even to be in charge of a hospital. The full college
may come, we