Anna was interested in health matters at least as early as 1868 when she read with approval George Drysdale’s The Elements of Social Science; or, Physical, Sexual and Natural Religion: an Exposition of the True Cause and Only Cure of the Three Primary Social Evils, Poverty, Prostitution and Celibacy. In 1870 she became a vegetarian, in part influenced by her brother John. In 1872 she bought The Lady’s Own Paper in London to promote her progressive views, especially vegetarianism, animal welfare and women’s rights.
In 1873 Anna began to study medicine in England, and in 1874 enrolled in the Paris School of Medicine. At this time women were barred from qualifying as doctors in England. She met the author Edward Maitland and he became her co-worker in the causes she espoused. Due to her strong beliefs, Anna flatly refused to undertake any vivisection during her course. She studied in both Paris and London, usually accompanied by Algernon or Maitland. Her dissertation, on vegetarianism, is still available today.
In his biography, The First Five Lives of Annie Besant, Arthur Nethercot makes these observations:
Mrs Anna Kingsford, after studying medicine at the University of Paris, had astonished and upset most professionals and laity by earning her M.D. in this very year, 1880. It was one of the landmarks in the English feminist movement. Dr Kingsford, who was a leading vegetarian as well as an anticlerical, did her best to wean Mrs Besant from her theoretical acceptance of vivisection – ‘theoretical’ because the latter had to admit that so far the only dissection she had practised had been on dead animals. Yet only a few years later, under circumstances which neither lady at this time would have predicted, Mrs Besant spectacularly adopted Dr Kingsford's anti-flesh platform in both particulars.
Athena, one of Annsford's favourite goddess