Elizabeth Ross

Elizabeth Ness MacBean Ross (14 February 1878 14 February 1915) was a Scottish physician who worked in Persia (presently Iran) among the Bakhtiari people. With training and a post-graduate qualification in tropical medicine, she responded to an appeal for doctors by the Serbian government in 1915 and treated Serbian casualties, most of whom were victims of typhus. Ross's life and work is commemorated by a plaque in her home town of Tain and her death anniversary is commemorated by ceremonies in Serbia, on 14 February. Early life and family Elizabeth Ness MacBean Ross was born in Hampstead, London, to Scottish parents. Her father, Donald Alexander MacBean Ross (18491893), manager of the London branch of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, was originally from Inverness, while her mother, Elizabeth Wilson Ross (née Ness) was from Tain. When her father died, they moved to her mother's family in Tain, where she attended Tain Royal Academy. She went on to study medicine at Queen Margaret College, Glasgow, in 1896. This was some two years after Marion Gilchrist, the first woman to qualify in medicine from a university in Scotland, had graduated. Ross graduated with an MB ChB in 1901. Lucy, one of Ross's sisters, also graduated in medicine and became a doctor in York. James Ness MacBean Ross, her brother, became a naval doctor and was awarded the Military Cross and bar and the Croix de Guerre during the First World War.