Dame Mary Ann Dacomb Scharlieb, DBE (née Bird; 18 June 1845 – 21 November 1930) was a pioneer British female physician and gynaecologist in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

After her graduation and work in India, she went to England to do her Postgraduation in Medicine (gynecology) and by her persistence she returned to the UK to become a qualified doctor.

She was the first woman to be elected to the honorary visiting staff of a hospital in the UK[3] and one of the most distinguished women in medicine of her generation.

[6] Aged 19, she met William Scharlieb, "who was engaged in eating his dinners at the Middle Temple, preparatory to his call to the Bar and subsequent practice in Madras as a barrister".

While in Madras, Scharlieb learned about the lack of medical services for women's gynaecological health and during childbirth, making the birth process dangerous.

However, her husband did not want her to leave their young family to study in England, where women were starting to gain entrance into medical schools.

[6] She set sail to return to England with her children, old enough by then to travel, in a small ship, her eyes fixed on a degree in medicine.

[6] Upon her return to England in 1878, she called on Dr (Mrs) Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the only qualified medical woman until 1877, who had recently started the London School of Medicine for Women.

Here she met with small encouragement, her prolonged stay in India and her naturally frail physique producing an unfavourable impression of her ability to follow such a strenuous profession.

[10][11] She began her private practice after returning again to England, on 21 May 1887, with five patients in the morning, at 75 Park Street, where she shared an office with her medical student son.

[8] After the outbreak of World War I she was offered (in September 1914) the charge of one of the Women's Hospitals in Belgium, but, realizing her age and her probable inability to stand the life, she declined.

[15] She became Chairman of the Midwifery Committee of the Council of War Relief, and spent much of her time and remaining energies in its Maternity Hospital.

She spoke of divorce and her belief that it is unjust even to the guilty party, who, if a second union is contracted by the innocent partner, is "thereby prevented from making reparation and by this debarred from full repentance".

[8] As a feminist she drew heavily on the theories of race superiority and argued that it was only natural that greater equality between the sexes in Britain should be achieved owing to their racial similarity.