The collaborative relationship between the College and India is longstanding, with the establishment of the College’s Indian Chapter in 1986 a key milestone in this partnership of surgical education and professional exchange.
Thousands of Indian surgeons have obtained RCSEd qualifications. From the late nineteenth century, many Indian doctors and medical students travelled to the UK to study medicine, with large numbers sitting examinations in Edinburgh to become College Licentiates or Fellows.
From 1886, the Scottish Royal Colleges became the first institutions in Scotland to qualify women in medicine and surgery through the Triple Qualification (TQ) examination, with Indian women among the early cohorts. Among them was Visakhapatnam-born Annie Wardlaw Jagannadham (LRCSEd 1890), the first female Indian doctor entered on the British Medical Register, and Kadambini Ganguly (LRCSEd 1893), one of the first female graduates of the University of Calcutta. Career opportunities for Scottish-trained female surgeons were limited, and India also became an important destination for our early female Fellows. Alice Headwards-Hunter (FRCSEd 1920), the first woman admitted to Fellowship, practised in India and received the Kaiser-I-Hind silver medal in 1945. Helen McMillan (FRCSEd 1921) spent most of her career in Ajmer, where she became renowned across Rajputana for her surgical skills.