Saleni Armstrong-Hopkins (born January 21, 1855), born Saleni Armstrong, and sometimes seen as Salini Armstrong-Hopkins, was a Canadian-born American physician, medical missionary, and author.

Early life and education

Saleni Armstrong was born in

London, Ontario London (pronounced ) is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River, approximate ...

, the daughter of William Leonard Armstrong and Elizabeth Summers Armstrong. Her father was a

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...

surgeon during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. She was raised in Michigan and Nebraska. Armstrong attended

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

for a year and graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1885, with an internship in gynecology and obstetrics at the Philadelphia Lying-in Charity Hospital. She also studied at Mount Vernon Institute of Elocution and Languages.

Career

Armstrong founded and ran an orphanage in Platte County, Nebraska, as a young doctor. She became a medical missionary in India as a single woman in 1886, serving with her sister Willimina L. Armstrong, and later with her husband, Methodist clergyman George Armstrong-Hopkins. She founded and directed a hospital and a nurses' training school at Khetwadi from 1887 to 1889. She was physician in charge at Lady Atchison Hospital in

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...

and a hospital in

Hyderabad, Sindh Hyderabad ( Sindhi and ur, ; ) is a city and the capital of Hyderabad Division in the Sindh province of Pakistan. It is the second-largest city in Sindh, and the eighth largest in Pakistan. Founded in 1768 by Mian Ghulam Shah Kalhoro of th ...

from 1889 to 1893. From 1893 to 1895, she was on the staff of a hospital in

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest city ...

. She sponsored several Indian students to attend college in the United States. The Armstrong-Hopkinses went to Bombay in 1912; she retired from the mission field after her husband's death in 1918. In 1899, Armstrong-Hopkins sued her superior, Methodist bishop

James Mills Thoburn James Mills Thoburn (March 7, 1836 – November 28, 1922) was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church as well as an author. He did missionary work in India. Thoburn was born on March 7, 1836 in St. Clairsville, Ohio and graduated fr ...

, for slander. She sued him again in 1907 for libel, and won an award of $500. Thoburn had claimed that Armstrong-Hopkins was spending lavishly on dresses, stockings, shoes, and hats for her Indian patients. She held a medical license in Nebraska from 1894, but was refused a license to practice in Washington, D. C. in 1903, when the district's board of medical supervisors questioned her credentials and asked her to sit for an examination. Books by Armstrong-Hopkins included ''Within the Purdah'' (1898), ''Fruit of Suffering'' (a book of poems), ''Pork and Mustard'', and ''Khetwadi Castle'' (1900). She gave lectures on her experiences in India to women's groups and at church events.

Personal life

In 1893, Saleni Armstrong married George Franklin Hopkins (1855-1918), as his second wife. They both used the surname Armstrong-Hopkins after they married, and their legal change to the hyphenated surname made headlines in 1905. In 1926, she was on a list of "Lost Alumnae" of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania; her alumnae association had lost track of her address. Her younger sister Willimina Leonora Armstrong was known later in life as

Zamin Ki Dost Zamin Ki Dost (; pen name of Willimina Leonora Armstrong) (August 14, 1866 – November 2, 1947) was an American physician, writer, and lecturer. She is best known for her book ''Incense of Sandalwood'' (1904) and stories of India written in colla ...

, a physician, writer, and lecturer on Eastern mysticism, based in Los Angeles.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Armstrong-Hopkins, Saleni 1855 births American women physicians American women non-fiction writers American Methodist missionaries Methodist missionaries in India Methodist writers Christian medical missionaries Emigrants from pre-Confederation Ontario to the United States Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania alumni Northwestern University alumni Year of death unknown