LAST week I told the story of the pioneering work of Dr Isabel Kerr tackling leprosy in India, her efforts recognised in 1923 when both she and her missionary husband George were awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal by King George V in his capacity as the Emperor of India.

Two other Scottish women doctors, Margaret Ida Balfour and Mary Ronald Bisset, also received Gold Medals and like Dr Kerr, their memories are revered more in India than their native country of Scotland.

Today and next week I will try to remedy that by telling their stories as Scottish winners of the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal, awarded by the Emperor of India, ie: the monarch of Great Britain, to “any person without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex ... who shall have distinguished himself or herself by important and useful service in the advancement of the public interest in India.”

It was the highest civilian award in the British Raj, the Crown rule in India between 1858 and 1947, though the medal was only instituted in 1900 in the final year of the reign of Queen Victoria. At first it was specifically for those who worked to combat famine, and also plague and other diseases, but it quickly became applicable to all those who had served the interests of the public, and especially the “interests of the Raj”.

Victoria personally ensured that each medal was inscribed “for public service in India”, and King George V in particular took great interest in the medal – he was the only King-Emperor of India to actually visit the Asian sub-continent while on the throne, and knew of the medal’s significance in India.

Isabel Kerr was awarded the Gold Medal for her work on leprosy, but it was a more general contribution to Indian women’s medicine which won Edinburgh-born Dr Margaret Ida Balfour her Gold Medal.

Balfour was born in Edinburgh on April 21, 1866, the daughter of an accountant Robert Balfour and his wife Frances Grace née Blaikie, who were both originally from Aberdeenshire. Balfour was always known as Ida to her family which was struck by tragedy when she was just a young child – her eldest brother contracted scarlet fever and her father was also infected while nursing his boy. Robert Balfour died of the illness in 1869, aged just 51, and is buried in the impressive family tomb at Dean Cemetery in the capital .

The family’s circumstances were dire for a while, but as her profile on the website of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) states: “It was perhaps this tragedy that led Ida to pursue a career in medicine. Only her extraordinary determination and intelligence would have enabled her to achieve this during a time when it was difficult for women to become doctors, especially with no financial backing.”

Her great niece Jean Hunter told the RCOG: “[Ida] was small and quiet, but she really was the iron hand in the velvet glove and if she wanted something she would persist.”

Medical studies for women by women were in their infancy, but Dr Sophia Jex-Blake, the first practising woman doctor in Scotland and one of the Edinburgh Seven whose story I told recently, was one of the co-founders of the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women in 1866.

One of her earliest students was Ida Balfour who qualified as a doctor in 1891, but was unable to graduate as Edinburgh University did not give degrees to women doctors at that time. Instead she had to go to Belgium and France to earn her degrees and within a year was working at Clapham University in London where she studied under the Irish-qualified Dr Annie McCall. She had set up the hospital to advance her pioneering work in midwifery, and Balfour took easily to the studies, so much so that by the end of 1892, Balfour was able to go to India.

She was appointed to manage the Women’s Hospital in Ludhiana and here she battled the local culture which insisted on “purdah” in highly unsuitable and often downright filthy facilities for women about to give birth.

Local midwives, often with no knowledge of sanitation, were charged with delivering babies, and Balfour immediately set about changing attitudes, so much so that within two years she was able to establish a medical school for women.

The following year Ida was promoted to Medical Superintendent of the Women’s Hospital at Nahan and in 1903 she became Medical Superintendent of the Lady Dufferin Hospital in Patiala. Lady Dufferin came from a family of Irish peers, her husband being the Viceroy of India, and she is famed in India for the fund she founded to provide modern medical care across the country.

Balfour’s success at Patiala led to her being integral to the founding of the Women’s Medical Service (WMS) of India established by the Dufferin Fund. She was soon made Chief Medical Officer of the WMS and can be fairly said to have helped revolutionise the medical care of Indian women, especially in the fields of obstetrics and gynaecology. She also wrote numerous articles on midwifery, infant mortality and maternal mortality. It is impossible to calculate how many babies and sick women were saved by her actions.

Her work was recognised by King George V with the award of the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal in 1920. The RCOG later made her a Fellow and in 1929 she was elected president of the all-India Association of Medical Women.

George V must have been a fan as he also awarded her the CBE, and on retirement to England, she developed an interest in women’s mental health, writing two studies on the subject.

On the outbreak of war, in her 70s, she served as an Air Raid Precautions Medical Officer. She died on December 1, 1945.