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Kate Lindsay: When the dream is bigger than the challenges

Adrian Neagu

It was the year 1870. Kate Lindsay was sitting the most important exam of her life in front of her Greek teacher.

It was an oral examination, and it is not known how long it lasted. They say that it went on for so long that night fell outside and the professor was forced to stop. Despite his intention to find a mistake in her answers, he had to declare her admitted. But who was Kate Lindsay? Where had she learnt so much Greek? And above all, why was she so determined to be admitted to that department?

The University of Michigan had just decided to admit women to its medical school. However, not all the professors agreed with this idea. The professor of Greek was said to be one of the fiercest opponents of the decision taken by his colleagues. To gain entry to the medical school, applicants had to sit oral examinations in algebra, geometry, Greek, and Latin. The young women aspiring to become students were therefore set to face the very people who did not want them there during their exams. Despite his reservations, the professor and his colleagues eventually accepted 17 girls as medical students. Among them was Catherine Lindsay, a 28-year-old distant niece of the great David Livingstone, who was known to her friends as Kate.

The roots of a passion for learning

Kate was born on 11 September 1848 in Wisconsin. Her parents were recent immigrants from Scotland who lived on a farm in Dane County. Their house was actually a wooden cabin on the edge of a forest, an excellent place for the children to play, but also a considerable challenge, as they had to walk a long way through the woods to get to school. Kate was the eldest of the family’s eight children, of whom only four survived to adulthood. In the evenings, her mother would read to them by the fire, and the children grew up with a passion for books and learning. However, their parents never intended them to do any other job than the one they did themselves.

From the age of nine, Kate attended school regularly, walking six kilometres through the woods every day, initially alone, and later with her brothers. After finishing school, as girls were not encouraged to go to university, she continued reading everything she could get her hands on. It was through this that she learnt about Florence Nightingale and her work in Europe. Captivated by the story, she decided to train hard to one day become a nurse. Although deeply committed to her dream, she promised her mother that she would not leave home until her youngest sister turned sixteen.

However, her parents did not approve of her desire to study or her passion for books, and tried to dissuade her. After all, in those days, everyone believed that girls were meant to get married and look after their families, not devote themselves to a profession like boys did. She taught herself geology, zoology, algebra, astronomy, and Latin. Even today, this would be rather unusual, but for a young woman who helped her mother with the housework and farm work, and was constantly discouraged by her parents whenever she picked up a book, achieving such a feat was nothing short of a miracle.

When she was 18, a young, sensitive schoolteacher arrived in their village and the two became friends, which later turned into an engagement. They wanted to marry, but when the young man was called up for military service, they decided to postpone the wedding until he returned. Tragically, the young man never made it to the front lines of the Civil War; he died of pneumonia at a training camp. Kate was devastated and ended up never getting married. She gradually had to give up her plans for a future family, but not her dream of becoming a nurse. Meanwhile, her critical mind and her desire to know the truth led her to study the Bible earnestly, and she was baptised into the Seventh-day Adventist Church alongside her father and brother.

In 1867, when her sister turned sixteen, Kate told her parents that she wanted to move to Battle Creek, where the Adventist Church had opened their first health centre. This would later become known as the Battle Creek Sanitarium. However, what she found in Battle Creek was not quite what she had expected, and she quickly realised that she needed to learn more in order to be of real help. Upon learning of a medical centre in New Jersey opened by Dr Russell Thacher Trall which offered patients treatments based on the principles of hydrotherapy, she went there to study these revolutionary yet simple treatment methods for two years.

Throughout this period, Kate had to work to support herself. Although she wrote to her parents quite often, it seems she never received any financial help or encouragement from them. In 1869, after two years, she returned to Battle Creek, hoping to put what she had learnt into practice. However, the sanatorium’s management was not yet prepared to accept all her ideas. At the same time, she felt the need for more serious medical training so that she, in turn, could take charge of training nurses. So in 1870, when she learned of the University of Michigan’s offer, she went to take the entrance exam. Although women were admitted to the day programme just like the men, they had to pay an additional tuition fee of $500 a year. This was by no means a small sum by the standards of the time, and it was meant to be another way of discouraging girls from enrolling. Kate paid the fee each year from her meagre savings, managing to complete her studies and return to Battle Creek, this time as Dr Catherine Lindsay. She was 35 years old.

Pioneering medical education

That same year, John Harvey Kellogg, who would go on to become one of the most renowned doctors in the United States, also returned from his studies. Impressed by Kate’s vision for training nurses, Kellogg agreed to found the first Adventist school for nurses with her in 1883. Kate devoted her life to this work and was often compared to her youth’s heroine, Florence Nightingale. 

She was said to be a particularly demanding teacher who set oral examinations and placed great emphasis on excellence among prospective nurses.

In 1896, Kate travelled to South Africa to develop the Adventists’ medical work in the region. Unfortunately, as she had not spent enough time in England for her US qualifications to be recognised, she was only granted authorisation to practise as a nurse, not a doctor. Her observant and resourceful nature led her to the sad realisation that many missionaries, who had received no prior training, were contracting malaria and dying. During this period, she therefore drew up the first training manual for missionaries, an excellent guide which subsequently saved the lives of many young Europeans and Americans coming to work in Africa.

Despite the difficulties she encountered, she established a training school for nurses in Cape Town, and also ran a short training course for staff at the Matabele Mission, later known as the Solusi Mission, in what is now Zimbabwe. It was also here that she dug a well and taught the locals to grow maize, all at her own expense.

In 1899, she was forced to return to the United States. On her way home, however, she stayed in Europe for a while and visited the Adventist sanatorium in Skodsborg. She then bought a house in North Carolina but soon donated it to the local Adventist community to establish a medical centre. Encouraged by Dr Kellogg, she moved to the Sanatorium in Boulder, Colorado in 1901, where she served as medical director and principal lecturer at the nursing school from 1902.

Those who knew her recall how, even at the age of 77 and despite struggling with asthma since childhood and arthritis that made movement difficult, she continued to help train future nurses with great enthusiasm. She died on 31 March 1923, leaving behind an invaluable legacy: the Adventist system of medical education, which is now spread throughout the world and highly regarded by all who encounter it. She set an example of excellence, which she had imposed upon herself ever since the days when she roamed the woods around her parents’ farm and learnt Latin by the light of an oil lamp in her bedroom.

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Adrian Neagu recounts the inspiring story of Kate Lindsay, who overcame the barriers of her time through determination, patience, and passion to become a pioneer in medical education, leaving a valuable legacy within the Adventist system.

Milky Way Photography
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