Health Care Delivery 

Palace of Healing is the true story of Dr. Clara Swain, the first woman missionary doctor and the hospital she founded. “India is the land of breaking hearts”. These are the words written in 1865 by Mrs. Williams, wife of the first Methodist missionary to India in a letter to her American lady friends in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1870, through the sponsorship of these Boston ladies, the first woman missionary doctor, Dr. Clara Swain, ever seen in the orient came to India to meet the incredible needs of their female population. In those days men doctors were forbidden to treat women patients. Dr. Swain was a rarity, for in those days only a handful of women were – begrudgingly – admitted to the study of medicine. To the Indians, both Brahmin and Muslim were confined in strictest purhdah, an unveiled female was a rarity; an American woman who had healing powers was unheard of. And, yet in two short years, Clara Swain did so much to alleviate his subjects’ sufferings that the venerable Nawab of Rampore (a province in India) donated his ancient dwelling to her. In time, the building became known as the Palace of Healing. This a magnificent story of that residence, which is still a living force, in Bareilly, India. It is also a thrilling narrative of the tremendous determination and courage of the Boston ladies who organized the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society, whose generosity enabled Clara Swain and succeeding generations of selfless healers to go to India. And it is the story of how a modern hospital was built out of a collection of bare rooms, no equipment, and unfaltering faith. Working exclusively with women, Dr. Swain was gradually able to instigate a training program for nursing and child care. So successful was she that her successors were able to expand her hospital and shortly before World War II, to admit men patients as well. Indeed, pioneering work in the treatment of jungle-warfare wounds was performed at Bareilly on British tommies and sepoys evacuated from Burma. Palace of Healing is not only the dramatic and long- awaited tribute to he procession of dedicated people who have devoted their lives to the augmentation of Dr. Clara Swain’s inspired vision, it is a chronicle of modern India itself. - from Amzon