The hospital was founded by Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder in 1900. Ida Scudder was the daughter of second-generation medical missionaries from the Dutch Reformed Church in the United States of America (US) who served in India. She was born in 1870 in Tindivanam, which is approximately 60 miles from Madras (known as Chennai today). As a young girl she witnessed famine, poverty and death, and vowed that she would never follow in her parents' footsteps and become a missionary. The Scudder family returned to the US on furlough in 1878 and Ida began her education. Her parents returned to India, but Ida Scudder stayed in the US attending the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies (now Northfield Mount Herman). In 1891, she was called back to India to care for her ailing mother.

It was at this time that Ida became acutely aware of the lack of medical services available to women and children in India, primarily due to cultural and religious norms that did not allow male practitioners to treat females. This awareness became the driving force of her life one evening in her parents' bungalow, when a young Indian man came to the door requesting Ida's help for his wife who was struggling in childbirth. He rejected Ida's father, Dr John Scudder's care and left. Two more men came that very night with similar requests, seeking medical help for their wives in labor, but again turning down John Scudder's care. The three women and their babies died that night. The incident shook 24-year-old Ida Scudder to the core.

After prayer and deep thought Ida Scudder changed the course of her life, deciding to become a doctor in the US so that she could return to India to treat Indian female patients, and train Indian women to become doctors and nurses to serve their own. She returned to the US and in 1895, enrolled in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She completed her studies in New York where she was in the first class of doctors at Cornell Medical College[11] that included women (1899). Within three months she set sail for India with a "fiery passion to change things.

Dr. Ida S. Scudder opened a single-bed dispensaryin Vellore in 1900. In 1902, she built the 40-bed Mary Taber Schell Memorial Hospital for women, named in memory of the wife of a NY benefactor. She continued her work in the dispensary and started training women as compounders in 1903. She began bringing "roadside dispensaries" to rural villages in 1906 when the average life expectancy of an Indian was 25 years.[1] She started a training program for nurses in 1909 and began training women physicians with the Union Mission Medical School for Women that opened in 1918. In 1938 the government changed its policy declaring that medical degrees could be granted only by universities; Scudder decided to upgrade her medical school to a medical college, the Christian Medical College. The college was affiliated with the Madras University, and in 1942 it began offering the MBBS course.

In 1945, a laboratory technician training course was started. In 1946 a College of Nursing, India's first, was started. In 1947, first batch of men medical students were admitted. Medical Postgraduate Courses (MD and MS) were started in 1950. In 1969 Postgraduate degree courses in nursing were started.

A number of other people also played an important role in the development of the college including Dr Theodore Howard Somervell, a British surgeon, Dr Paul W. Brand, another British surgeon, Dr Edward Gault, an Australian surgeon and pathologist, and Dr Mary Verghese, an Indian Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation specialist.
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