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Wanting to go to Arabia as a medical missionary is a natural result of my home and church life. By impressions gained in family worship, at Church and Sunday School and from the missionary stories my mother told, the idea grew that I might be of service in missionary work. The career of Ida Scudder of India seemed most interesting to me and I hope I could study Medicine as a preparation. Arabia is an attractive field for a physician to begin a practice of Medicine. Comparatively, the United States has an oversupply of practitioners. Because there are so few educated doctors in Arabia, one could be of relatively much greater service there. Many people have no one but quacks and ignorant midwives to help them in illness. The ignorance of the people concerning ordinary cleanliness causes tragedies we rarely see here. There is every kind of medical work to be done – sanitation, surgery of all kinds, feeding and care of babies and young children, treatment of the many blinding eye diseases of the tropics, relief of real suffering and the prevention of the epidemics which occur so often in the warm climate. A woman physician finds a special appeal in women’s work. Islam tends to make women's lives hard and unhappy. Early marriage, seclusion in the harem, lack of education, illness accompanying and following childbirth, lack of medical care combined with polygamy and easy divorce for the husband cause tragedies which a woman physician could alleviate for men physicians usually may not attend women patients. Under the care of ignorant midwives, women often remain in labor for days and easily contract the most virulent infections – even tetanus is not rare, and their barbarous practices frequently leave the mother with a chronic illness.