Portrait Of A Lady: At the age of 19, Anandi Gopal Joshi, the first female doctor of India, obtained an MD in US

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

On this day let us get to know India’s first female doctor Anandi Gopal Joshi. She was also the first Indian woman to obtain a two-year medical degree (MD) in the United States! At the age of 17, Joshi battled failing health as well as social censure, to study medicine.

Named Yamuna at birth, Joshi was born to a family of landlords. Her family hailed from Maharashtra and were Chitpavan Brahmins. At the tender age of nine, she was married off to a widower Gopalrao Joshi, a postal clerk, twenty years her senior. It was he who gave her the name Anandi. He was a progressive thinker who advocated for women’s education.

Joshi became a mother at the age of 14. However, the baby boy did not survive infancy and died due to a lack of timely medical care, barely ten days after birth. This tragedy spurred her to study medicine.

At 14, Joshi started her life journey to become a doctor. Her husband Gopalrao supported her all the way. He tried enrolling her in missionary schools when that did not work out, the duo movies to Calcutta. In 1880, Gopalrao wrote a letter to Royal Wilder, an American missionary, requesting him to help his wife study medicine. Theodicia Carpenter, a resident of New Jersey, read the letter and impressed with what she read, urged Wilder to give Joshi a chance. She was given an opportunity to study medicine at the Women’s Medical College in Pennsylvania. However, before leaving for the US, Joshi fell ill and was plagued with weakness and fevers. Poor health was far from the only obstacle she encountered. Many orthodox people expressed outrage at the notion of a Hindu woman pursuing higher studies and travelling abroad. However, in a