Born in India, Inglis was one of the first women to study medicine in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Once qualified, she devoted herself to improving the medical treatment of women. She established a maternity hospital staffed entirely by women in Edinburgh in 1894. At the outbreak of the First World War she organised all-women ambulance units. In 1915 she went to Serbia where she set up three military hospitals. The Croatian sculptor Meštrović made this bust of Inglis, whom he had never met, the year after she died of cancer on her return to Britain in 1917. It was then presented to the Scottish nation by the Serbian government in gratitude for Inglis's work in Serbia during the war.