Breaking out of 'zenana' medicine

The author first gives a quick backgrounder about women doctors in other countries, who paved the way for the first women doctors from India

While reading Lady Doctors, we are treated to a striking fact about India’s first woman doctor: “A crater on Venus is named after Anandibai (Joshi), but not a single road or school in India”. One could add — plenty of streets in Mumbai are named after those who made life difficult for Rukhmabai Raut, but Google Maps does not find one named after her.

It is hardly a coincidence that most stories in this book are not widely known. Many pioneering women doctors “did not keep diaries or write their autobiographies. The memoirs they did write were not thought worthy of