Guide to the Lois H. Visscher Papers

Lois Helena Visscher, medical missionary and physician, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on September 28, 1914, to Oswald W. and Helen Ruth Thompson Visscher. The family moved to Evanston, Illinois, in 1918. Visscher was educated in Evanston public schools. She attended Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts (1931-1932 and 1933-1934) and the University of Illinois at Urbana (1935-1936). She received her B.S. in Medicine (1938) and her medical degree with honors (1940) from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago and completed internships and residencies in obstetrics, surgery, and pediatrics.

In November 1942, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. appointed Dr. Visscher to serve as a medical missionary in India. She worked at Memorial Hospital in Fatehgarh (1943-1964), Christian Hospital in Kasganj (1965-1979), and served briefly on the staff of the Wanless Chest Hospital near Miraj in 1951. She spent two months in 1967 in Vietnam as the first woman doctor accepted by the American Medical Association's Volunteer Physicians for Vietnam and returned again in 1972 under the VPVN program.

In 1979, Dr. Visscher requested a transfer to Nasir Rural Hospital in Sudan, Africa (1980-1981). Following this assignment, she retired in May 1981 from the Program Agency, United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. She then offered her services to the International Rescue Committee and began working with Cambodian refugees in Thailand in June 1981. During her stay in Southeast Asia, Dr. Visscher also served with the Baptist Missionary Fellowship at the Kwai River Christian Hospital near the Burmese border.

In Thailand, Dr. Visscher was the victim of a nearly fatal stabbing. After a lengthy hospital stay in Bangkok and a convalescent period in the United States, she served briefly with the Indian Health Service at the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fort Washington, Wyoming. Subsequently, she returned to Thailand to continue her medial service for another six years. In 1990, she returned to the United States, residing at Westminster Gardens in Duarte, California.

Dr. Visscher died in 2002.