Doctors without bordersPremium

Explore the rich history of Chennai's Madras Medical College through the eyes of pioneering doctors from the 1950s.

After stumbling upon a tweet about a few doctors from Madras Medical College’s batch of 1951 celebrating a birthday, I decided to visit these 90-plus-year-old doctors settled in different parts of Chennai, for a walk into the past.

Some of the first women students of MMC, Mary Ann Dacombe Scharlieb, S Mitchell, D White, and M Beale, graduated in the 1870s, and Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy, the first Indian woman to get a medical degree from MMC, passed out of the college in 1912. As a college that documents a legacy older than Indian independence, there should be better archives for the same. Despite societal discouragement towards women pursuing Medicine, Madras Medical College still proudly boasts about their lady doctors who went on to become pioneers in many fields like Dr. Ayyathan Janaki Ammal, Dr. T. S. Kanaka, and Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, while also playing an important role in women’s empowerment since the pre-Independence period. 

“There were around 30 women and 100 men in my batch, a 3:10 ratio,” says Dr P Chandra as she shared her experiences as part of the MMC batch of 1951, which underwent a meticulous interview process for admission. “For the first time in 1951, a panel headed by Dr A Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar selected the candidates for Madras Medical College and Stanley Medical College,” adds Dr Neela Govindaraj. MBBS courses used to be extremely difficult back then. “Only about 20 or 23 of the batch passed in the first attempt, and it was not an extraordinary thing in those days,” Dr. A Abraham adds.

All part of MMC’s batch of 1951, Dr Abraham is a surgeon and Lt Commander; Dr Chandra is a paediatrician; and Dr Neela is a forensic pathologist.

With a giggle, Dr Chandra reminisces about her college days and how different social interactions between the different genders are today. “I rarely spoke to any of my male classmates until I was doing house-surgency. Later, I interacted because we were working together and there was a professional bond as well,” she says, fondly remembering events from over half a century ago. 

“ Many female classmates went into the non-clinical departments where there is no night duty involved because it was easier for them to manage when they got married. People used to say lady doctors would not get grooms easily because they needed to find someone better than a doctor for her, which was a difficult task back in the day,” she adds Zooming back to 2024, when college students are not worried about careers being marriage-friendly, Dr Chandra jokes about her colleagues mentioning how they were born in the wrong era.

“There was still a stigma about opting for fields like surgery. I remember applying for MSc Surgery with a friend, and both our applications got rejected,” Dr Neela says, mentioning how they did not know what to do and that if it were today, legal measures could have been taken. “In my time, getting government jobs was far easier,” says Dr Chandra adding how back then there were only two medical colleges in Chennai — Madras Medical College and Stanley Medical College. “Even before completing my house-surgency, I got the posting orders for an interview.”