“When I told my parents that I wanted to study medicine, they and my relatives objected and scolded me, for they were afraid that I would not marry if I would study medicine.  In India they think meanly of a person, especially a girl, who is not married at the proper age.  I want now to show my people that it is not mean to remain unmarried.  This is my second aim which came from the first.”

[Illustration:  A MEDICAL STUDENT IN VELLORE]

The following is written by a Hindu student:—­

“Before entering into the subject, I should like to write a few words about myself.  I am the first member of our community to attain English education.  Almost all my relatives (I talk only about the female members of our community) have learnt only to write and read our mother language Telugu.

“When I entered the high school course I had a poor ambition to study medicine.  I do not know whether it was due to the influence of my brother-in-law who is a doctor, or whether it was due to our environments.  Near our house was a small hospital.  It was doing excellent work for the last five years.  Now unfortunately the hospital has been closed for want of stock and good doctors.  From that hospital I learnt many things.  I was very intimate with the doctors.  I admired the work they were doing.

“My father had a faithful friend.  He was a Brahman.  He realized from his own experience the want of lady doctors.  He had a daughter, his only child, and she died for want of proper medical aid.  Whenever my father’s friend used to see me he used to ask my father to send me to the Medical College, for he was quite interested in me, like my own father.  After all, as soon as I passed the School Final Examination, it was decided that I should take up medicine, but at that time my mother raised many an objection, saying the caste rules forbid it.  I left the idea with no hope of renewing it and joined the Arts College.  I studied one year in the College.  Then luckily for me my father and his friend tried for a scholarship.

“Luckily again, it was granted by the Travancore Government.

“I am not going to close before I tell a few words of my short experience in the College.  As soon as I came here I thought I wouldn’t be able to learn all the things I saw here.  I looked upon everything with strange eyes and everything seemed strange to me, too.  But, as the days passed, I liked all that was going on in the College.  The study—­I now long to hear more of it and study it.  Now everything is going on well with me and I hope to realize my ambition with the grace of the Almighty, for the ‘thoughts of wise men are Heaven-gleams.’”

[Illustration:  BETTER BABIES Throughout India.  Feeding and Weighing]

You ask, what of the future?  What will these young doctors bring to India’s need?  How much will they do?  Might one dare to prophesy that in years to come they will at least in their own localities make stories like the following impossible?