Anandibai Gopalrao Joshi was the first female physician of India. She was also the first Indian woman to receive an education abroad.
Anandibai was born on March 31 1865 in Kalyan, Mumbai to a Marathi Brahmin family. She was married when she was 9 to Gopalrao Joshi, a progressive thinker who supported women’s education. Anandibai bore her first child at 14, but the child did not survive long due to lack of medical attention.
Anandibai developed a wish to study medicine after this incident which was supported by her husband. He arranged for her to study in America and she travelled to New York from Kolkata by sea in June, 1883. She graduated with an MD from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in March 1886 at the age of 21. She returned to India and was appointed as the physician-in-charge of the female ward of the Albert Edward Hospital in Kolhapur. Unfortunately she died of tuberculosis 11 months later on February 26, 1887 in Pune.
Kadambini Ganguly was born on July 18, 1861 in Bhagalpur, Bihar into the family of Brahmo reformer Braja Kishore Basu. She became one of first two female graduates in India along with Chandramukhi Bose when she graduated from Bethune College in 1882.
She married Dwarakanath Ganguly on June 12 1883, 11 days before joining Calcutta Medical College.
Although they faced a severe backlash from the community, Dwarakanath encouraged her to study medicine. She graduated with a ‘Graduate of Bengal Medical College’ degree in 1886 and became one of the first Indian women physicians eligible to practice western medicine alongside Anandibai Gopal Joshi.
She was the mother of 8 children and practiced medicine for 37 years, even conducting an operation the day she died, October 3, 1923.
Picture Credit : Google
