MaximilianGreenb at 16:13, 24 April 2026

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{{Infobox person
|name = Anna Sarah Kugler
|image = Dr. Anna Sarah Kugler.jpg
| alt = Anna Sarah Kugler
|birth_date = {{Birth date|1856|4|19}}
|birth_place = [[Ardmore, Pennsylvania|Ardmore]], [[Montgomery County, Pennsylvania]], U.S.
|death_date = {{Death date|1930|7|26}} (aged 74)
|death_place = [[Guntur]], [[Andhra Pradesh]], [[India]]
|occupation = Medical Missionary in India
| known_for = Founding a hospital in Guntur, India and teaching medicine
}}

'''Dr. Anna Sarah Kugler''' (19 April 1856 – 26 July 1930) was the first medical missionary of the [[Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America]]. She served in India for 47 years.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.livinglutheran.com/seeds/7-influential-lutheran-women.html |title=7 influential Lutheran women |work=Living Lutheran |access-date=16 September 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131015000034/http://www.livinglutheran.com/seeds/7-influential-lutheran-women.html |archive-date=15 October 2013 }}</ref> She founded a [[Kugler Hospital|hospital]] in [[Guntur]] which was later named for her.

==Early life and education==
She was born in [[Ardmore, Pennsylvania|Ardmore]], [[Montgomery County, Pennsylvania|Montgomery County]], [[Pennsylvania]], on April 19, 1856, to Charles Kugler and Harriet S. Sheaff.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=73xfDQAAQBAJ|title=Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States, Volume 5|last1=Kurian|first1=George Thomas|last2=Lamport|first2=Mark A.|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2016|isbn=978-1442244320|pages=1299}}</ref> She attended a private school in Bryn Mawr and graduated from [[Friends' Central School|Friends' Central High School]] in [[Philadelphia]]. She then attended the [[Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania]], graduating in 1879.<ref name=":0" /> She interned for two years in the Women's Department of the [[Norristown State Hospital]].<ref name=":0" />

==Medical career==
In 1882 she received a letter from the Reverend Adam D. Rowe, a Lutheran missionary serving in India, suggesting that India urgently needed medical missionaries to serve women.<ref name = "archives" /> She decided to apply for sponsorship to the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the [[Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America|General Synod]] of the [[Lutheran Church in America]]. The Synod board said it was "not yet ready to undertake work of this kind" (i.e., medical mission) but was willing to send her to India as a teacher for Muslim women living in harems.<ref name = "lutheran" /> She accepted the assignment because she was sure she could eventually convince the board to establish medical work in India, and she wanted to be in at the beginning.<ref name = "archives" /> On August 25, 1883, she sailed for India, arriving on November 29, 1883. She was assigned to Guntur in the state of [[Andhra Pradesh]].

In addition to her teaching duties, she practised medicine for the local women, who had previously received only primitive medical care. Her work was hampered by limitations of caste and race - as a white woman she was regarded as "unclean" by high-caste Hindus - but she said, "it was all in the way of opening up the path for those who came later."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Glimpses of the Lives of Great Missionary Women|last=Kretzmann|first=Paul E.|publisher=Concordia Publishing House|year=1930|location=St. Louis|page=80}}
</ref> Despite the restrictions, during her first year in Guntur she treated 185 patients at their homes, and 276 at the Zenana Home where she lived. Her motto was "Ourselves Your Servants for Jesus' Sake."<ref name="archives">{{cite web|url=http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/History/ELCA-Archives/Luth-Leaders-Collection/Anna-Kugler.aspx|title=Anna Sarah Kugler|work=Lutheran Leaders Collection|publisher=ECLA Archives|access-date=16 September 2013}}</ref>

She continued her teaching and was placed in charge of the Hindu Girls School and the Girls Boarding School.<ref name = "archives" /> In December 1885 she was finally appointed a medical missionary.<ref name="lutheran">{{cite web|url=http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=6075 |title=The way we were: 1886 |work=The Lutheran |access-date=16 September 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140808065216/http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=6075 |archive-date=8 August 2014 }}</ref> She immediately began planning for a hospital and a dispensary. From 1889 to 1891 she was back in the United States on furlough; she used the time to complete her postgraduate work and study hospital-building and equipment. When she returned to India she was able to purchase an 18-acre plot of land with the donations generated by the goodwill she had earned and also with help from her fellow missionaries who collected money for her.

A dispensary was opened on the land in February 1893, and later that year the cornerstone for the [[Kugler Hospital|American Evangelical Lutheran Mission Hospital]] was laid. The hospital itself opened on June 23, 1897. It was a 50-bed hospital and was regarded as one of the best in India. Bhuyanga Rao Bahadur of Ellore, a local [[Raja]], became a supporter of Dr. Kugler's work after she treated his wife and delivered their son, and he donated the "Rao Chinnamagari Satram" as a rest-house opposite the hospital, where Hindu families could stay while their relatives were being treated.

In 1895 she was finally released from other mission duties and was able to devote herself full-time to medical work. In addition to her duties at the dispensary and hospital, she worked to open dispensaries in other villages throughout South India; raised funds for a children's ward, maternity ward and operating room in the hospital; and did medical work in [[Rentachintala]].

While on furlough in the United States in 1928, she wrote ''Guntur Mission Hospital'', an autobiography intended as a guide to future medical missionaries.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kugler|first=Anna Sarah|title=Guntur Mission Hospital, Guntur, India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hYEPGQAACAAJ|year=1928|publisher=Women's Missionary Society, The United Lutheran Church in America}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IWdZTaJdc6UC|title=The United States in Asia: A Historical Dictionary|last=Shavit|first=David|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|year=1990|isbn=031326788X|location=New York|pages=288}}</ref>

==Recognition==
In recognition of her work she was twice (1905 and 1917) awarded the [[Kaisar-i-Hind Medal]], an award of distinction bestowed on civilians of any nationality who rendered services to the [[British Raj]].

She fell ill from exhaustion in 1925 and returned to the United States for two years to recuperate. She then returned to India to carry on her work despite having [[pernicious anemia]]. She died at her own hospital in Guntur on July 26, 1930. She was buried in Guntur though there is a memorial to her in the Saint Paul's Lutheran Cemetery in [[Ardmore, Pennsylvania]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/36726707|title=Dr Anna Sarah Kugler|work=Find a Grave Memorial|access-date=16 September 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lowermerionhistory.org/burial/lutheran/k.html|title=Dr Anna Sarah Kugler Memorial|work=Lower Merion History|access-date=2 January 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://kgmm.org|title=Anna S. Kugler, M.D. Guntur Medical Mission Hospital}}</ref> Shortly before her death she is reported to have said to [[Ida Scudder|Dr. Ida Scudder]], her colleague and close associate, "I would like to get well and work longer, for I would like to feel I had served India for fifty years, and I have served only forty-seven." After her death the hospital she had founded was renamed [[Kugler Hospital]] in her honor.
[[File:ASK.jpg|thumb|125px|''The Life and Work of Dr. Anna Sarah Kugler'', new title in 2017 by Eva Sundari Elizabeth.]]

== References ==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
*{{cite book |editor-last1=Lindley |editor-first1=Susan Hill|editor-last2=Stebner |editor-first2=Eleanor J.|title=The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History|publisher=Westminster John Knox Press|date=2008 |pages=124}}
*{{cite book |last=Elizabeth |first=Eva Sundari |date=2017 |title=The Life and Work of Dr. Anna Sarah Kugler}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kugler, Anna Sarah}}
[[Category:Female Christian missionaries]]
[[Category:Christian medical missionaries]]
[[Category:American women medical doctors]]
[[Category:Lutheran missionaries in India]]
[[Category:American Lutheran missionaries]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal]]
[[Category:1856 births]]
[[Category:1930 deaths]]
[[Category:Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania alumni]]
[[Category:American missionaries in India]]
[[Category:American medical missionaries]]

Anna Sarah Kugler - Revision history

MaximilianGreenb at 16:13, 24 April 2026