Drawing on archival sources and adopting a microhistory approach that pays attention to “hidden transcripts,” this article aims to fill a gap in the scholarship on Catholic women and medical missions by analysing the largely overlooked contribution of two women doctors, Agnes McLaren and Anna Dengel, in professionalising the healing ministry of the Catholic Church. In 1925, Dengel founded an international religious congregation, the Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries, with the goal of providing professional health care to women in British India at a time when Church law still forbade Sisters to practise the full scope of medicine. Focusing on the years leading up to the Society's foundation and its early days in India, I highlight the multilayered context of their “holy experiment,” the various hierarchies and discourses within which they operated, and the ways in which as European Catholic women religious they negotiated with the Church patriarchy. Focusing on and advancing a nuanced approach to female religious agency, I demonstrate how their complex marginal positionality vis-à-vis both Church hierarchy and British colonial establishment made them paradoxical players whose very terms of subordination gave them possibilities for agency and self-determination. My analysis of their motivations, ideas, and self-understanding challenges the standard postcolonial critique of medical missions.

中文翻译：

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“神圣的实验”：医疗传教修女或天主教会内的女性宗教人士如何成为医生*

本文利用档案资料，采用关注“隐藏记录”的微观历史方法，旨在通过分析两位女医生艾格尼丝·麦克拉伦和安娜·登格尔在很大程度上被忽视的贡献，填补天主教妇女和医疗使命方面的学术空白。 ，使天主教会的治疗事工专业化。1925 年，丹格尔创立了一个国际宗教团体——天主教医疗传教士协会，其目标是在教会法律仍然禁止修女们从事全面医学工作的情况下，为英属印度的妇女提供专业的医疗保健。重点关注该协会成立前的几年以及在印度的早期，我强调了他们的“神圣实验，”她们运作的各种等级制度和话语，以及作为欧洲天主教女性修女与教会父权制谈判的方式。我关注并推进对女性宗教机构的细致入微的方法，展示了她们相对于教会等级制度和英国殖民机构的复杂边缘地位如何使她们成为自相矛盾的参与者，而她们的从属条件给了她们机构和自决的可能性。我对他们的动机、想法和自我理解的分析挑战了对医疗任务的标准后殖民批评。我展示了他们相对于教会等级制度和英国殖民机构的复杂边缘地位如何使他们成为自相矛盾的参与者，他们的从属条件给了他们代理和自决的可能性。我对他们的动机、想法和自我理解的分析挑战了对医疗任务的标准后殖民批评。我展示了他们相对于教会等级制度和英国殖民统治的复杂边缘地位如何使他们成为自相矛盾的参与者，他们的从属条件给了他们代理和自决的可能性。我对他们的动机、想法和自我理解的分析挑战了对医疗任务的标准后殖民批评。