PARA PAR@ ` ¬TEXT ` £Swain, Clara A.1834╨1910medical missionaryBorn on July 18, 1834, in Elmira, New York, Clara Swain grew up from the age of two in Castile, New York. She attended local schools and for some years from the age of fifteen alternated periods of study and teaching. In 1856╨1857 she attended a seminary in Canandaigua, New York, and for seven years thereafter she taught in a public school there. In 1865 she began studying medicine under a woman physician at the Castile Sanitarium, and in 1866╨1867 and 1868╨1869 she attended the Woman╒s Medical College of Pennsylvania, receiving her M.D. degree in 1869. A short time later she responded to a call for a woman physician to work with women and orphans at the Methodist mission in Bareilly, India. Under the auspices of the New England branch of the Woman╒s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church she sailed from New York in November 1869 (in company with Isabella Thoburn) and arrived at Bareilly in January 1870. She was the first woman physician from the United States to work as a missionary in Asia. She quickly established a set of courses in anatomy, physiology, and materia medica for a class of 17 young Indian women, 13 of whom qualified in 1873 to practice routine medicine; at the same time she attended the girls of the Methodist orphanage and the residents of a village of Indian Christians and opened her general practice to all. She had great success in gaining admission to zenanas and in winning the confidence of the women in them. In October 1871 the Nawab of Rampore gave Swain a 40-acre estate adjoining the mission, and there she opened a dispensary in May 1873 and what was apparently the first hospital for women in India in January 1874. The hospital was so planned as to allow due regard for caste and class taboos and to accommodate families and servants, with the result that patients came from as far away as Burma. Swain╒s case load numbered in the thousands. From early 1876 to late 1879 she took furlough and rested in Castile, New York. Her health and strength largely restored, she again worked at Bareilly from January 1880 to March 1885. In the latter year she was invited to become palace physician to the Rajah of Rajputana and his wife, the Rani of Khetri. She accepted on condition that she be allowed to evangelize as well in the region, which had long been hostile to Christianity. The Rajah allowed her a room in the palace for a dispensary open to women of all classes, and she carried her practice into the surrounding area, frequently riding her own elephant. Except for a furlough to the United States in 1888╨1889, she remained at Khetri until 1896, when she retired to Castile. She revisited India in 1906╨1908 and in 1909 she published extracts from her letters over a span of a quarter-century as A Glimpse of India. She died in Castile, New York, on December 26, 1910. The hospital in Bareilly was later named in her honor. &styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ . !I ≡ 5¬ ± !I Ñ !I ▐ ╡ !I ² 5¬ ■ !I s 5¬ t !I !I , !I link ` HYPR Ñ ╡
