Mary Elizabeth MacCallum Scott

Mary Elizabeth MacCallum Scott was a Canadian physician and Christian medical missionary who spent twenty years in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). She was the first female doctor to serve in Jaffna, Ceylon. She started the first nursing school in Ceylon at Manipay and her training of women nurses was considered by historians to be “revolutionary” at the time. She was born in Martintown, Ontario, Canada in 1865. She was the daughter of the Rev. Daniel MacCallum, a Congregational minister, and Jeanette MacEwen MacCallum. She was trained as a teacher and then a nurse, graduating in 1886 from Farrand Training School, Harper Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. She then attended Queens University Medical School in Kingston, Ontario, and completed her medical training in New York at Belleview Hospital. She earned her M.D. and became a doctor in preparation for entering the missionary field. She married Thomas Beckett Scott, who was also a doctor and a missionary. They had seven children, five of whom survived to adulthood. In 1893, Scott and her husband were sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to Manipay, Sri Lanka during the period when Sri Lanka was still the British colony of Ceylon. They spent many years in the northern province of Jaffna (1893-1913) as part of the American Ceylon Mission (ACM). They reopened the medical ward in Manipay and re-named the General Mission Hospital as the Green Memorial Hospital, after its original founder Samuel Fisk Green. The Scotts served as joint directors of the Green Memorial Hospital until 1913 as well as consulting physicians for both the Green Memorial Hospital and the McLeod Hospital. Scott also established a maternity ward and a dispensary for women and children. She was known for her compassion and dedication to the patients, especially the poor and the marginalized. She also advocated for the education and empowerment of women in Ceylon. She retired from missionary work in 1913 and moved to the United States with her family. She died in Tuckahoe, Westchester County, New York on August 27, 1941. She was buried in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. She was honored by the Sri Lankan government with a commemorative stamp in 1993. She was also inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2018.