Beyond the Call of Duty: Cosmopolitan Education and the Origins of Asian-American Women’s Medicine

Abstract

“How many storms are our scattered boats required to face in this endless Ocean of Life,” a young Indian widow mused with audible exhaustion. It was not cold abstraction that had lent these lines their poetry but the equally chilling, even life-threatening experience of an oceanic storm in the cruel winter of early 1886. After half a week in her cabin of The British Princess, the air became “too stale to breathe.” Desperate, the passenger “resolved to go up on the deck” where, in spite of “the vast and dreadful aspect” of the roaring sea, “the fresh ocean air infused new life force […] my heart surged with energy, joy, and peace.” Applying “the lesson […] from this natural phenomenon,” she called on her readers: “Confront your foes and adversities, such as despair,” closing with the Sanskrit promise: “You will become fearless like a liberated soul.”1