Margaret Angus Patterson (née Ingram)

Former medical missionary who became a pioneer in electromedicine

Meg Patterson came early to medicine and, in spite of her sex, also to surgery. She qualified at the age of 21 during the second world war, and became FRCS (Edinburgh)—lone woman among the hundred candidates—at 25. She was one of only 20 women who had become fellows, and the only one in general surgery. Her career took her to independence India as a medical missionary, where over the next decade she held a number of …