Clara Swain

Who was Clara Swain?

Dr. Clara A. Swain was a physician and missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She has been called the "pioneer woman physician in India," and as well as the "first fully accredited woman physician ever sent out by any missionary society into any part of the Non-Christian world". Her call to service in India fell from a need to have a female physician provide quality medical care to high-caste women, that were religiously secluded to Zenana. Supported by the Women's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Swain left the United States in 1869, for Bareilly, India, where she spent the next twenty-seven years of her life treating women and children from illnesses, while simultaneously working to evangelize natives.

By the end of her first year in Bairelly, Swain had acquired seventeen medical students, clinically trained under her supervision, and had treated at minimum, 1,300 patients. Within the next four years, she helped establish the first hospital in India for women and children.