Born: 22 November 1859, Argentina
Died: 10 April 1934
Country most active: Argentina
Also known as: NA
Physician, reformer and activist Cecilia Grierson was the first woman to receive a medical degree in Argentina.
After working for several years as a teacher, she decided to pursue a career in medicine in her early 20s. Grierson faced deep opposition to her enrollment in medical school in 1883, and was asked to provide written justification for her wish to become a doctor. Women were barred from the schools of medicine at the nation’s four universities in operation at the time and few women in 19th century Argentina enrolled in formal secondary education. Another woman, Élida Passo, became the first Argentine woman to earn a university diploma in Argentina, in 1885. She overcame numerous rejected applications and returned to earn a medical degree, but contracted tuberculosis in her fifth year of medical school and died in 1893 without a diploma.
Grierson was an exceptional student, volunteering as an unpaid assistant at the university laboratory. During her internship with the Public Health Department, she organized an ambulance service, introducing the use of alarm bells (equivalent to modern sirens), an innovation that had been previously exclusive to the fire brigade. Her work during an 1886 cholera epidemic earned her widespread commendation for efficiently caring for patients in the isolation unit.
Grierson also helped bring kinesiology to Argentina. She introduced a massage therapy course at the school of medicine, and later published a textbook, Practical Massage, which was widely read and played a key role in the development of modern kinesiology in Argentina. In 1888, she joined the staff at the Hospital Rivadavia and completed her degree in 1889 with her successful defense of her thesis, Histero-ovariotomías efectuadas en el Hospital de Mujeres desde 1883 a 1889 (Ovary Extractions at the Women’s Hospital, 1883-1889).
After graduating, she joined the medical staff at Hospital San Roque (now Hospital Ramos Mejía). She taught classes in anatomy at the Academia de Bellas Artes, and provided free psychological and learning consultations for children with special needs, particularly blind and deaf/mute children. She also finished writing her textbooks: La educación del ciego (The Education of the Blind), Cuidado del enfermo (Patient Care) and Primer Tratado Nacional de Enfermería (First National Nursing Textbook).
In 1890, Grierson founded the country’s first nursing school, the Nursing School of the Hospital Británico de Buenos Aires, with classes on childcare, first aid and treatment of patients. Grierson directed the school until 1913. She was also a founding member of the Argentine Medical Association (1891). Inspired by the reports of the Third International Conference of the Red Cross on first aid training, she created the Argentine First Aid Society in 1892, publishing a book about the care of accident victims.
In 1892, she participated in the first cesarean section performed in Argentina, and founded the National Obstetrics Association in 1901, and its journal, Revista Obstétrica. She also gave gymnastics lessons at the school of medicine and mentored the school’s few other female students. One of those students, Armandina Poggetti, became the first woman in Argentina to earn a degree in pharmacology in 1902.
In 1902, Grierson founded the Society for Domestic Economy (later renamed the Technical School for Home Management), the first of its kind in Argentina. In 1907, she started the Domestic Sciences course at the Buenos Aires Girls’ Secondary School (the first such course in Argentina). Following her 1909 report on improving conditions in Europe around education, living standards and accessibility to vocational schools, the National Education Council approved a curriculum for vocational schools in Argentina. She also published Educación técnica de la mujer (Women’s Technical Education), introducing the study of day care in those schools. She taught at the School of Fine Arts and the National Secondary School for Girls. Although it is unclear whether she held eugenicist beliefs, the Argentine government named her as a representative to the First International Eugenics Conference, held in London in 1912.
Grierson was a dedicated advocate for women’s rights in Argentina, in part due to the harassment she experienced as a medical student and afterward. She joined the newly established Socialist Party of Argentina, and became one of a relatively few Argentine women in academia or from high society who supported feminism and the women’s emancipation movement. Grierson was named vice president of the second meeting of the International Council of Women (ICW), held in London in 1889, which eventually led her to establish the Argentine Women’s Council (CNM) in 1900. Along with fellow suffragist and doctor Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane, Grierson presented a draft bill on behalf of the CNM in 1906 to the National Congress proposing to create funds for social welfare benefits and maternity leave for working-class women. The bill was not passed, nor was another measure she had drafted banning the white slave trade.
As a result of ideological differents, 30 university and professional women, including Grierson, broke with the more conservative Catholics in the CNM. These women, including Elvira Rawson de Dellepiane, Julieta Lantieri Renshaw, Alicia Moreau de Justo, Ernestina A. López and other prominent women from academia, co-founded the Association of Argentine University Women (AMUA), the country’s first university student association for women, in 1904. The AMUA sought twork on the problems of working-class women as well as those of female university graduates, and campaigned against women’s inferior legal status, exclusion from civic activity and lack of access to education compared to men. They also campaigned for civil and political rights, the rights of children (particularly illegitimate children) and legalized divorce, and against alcoholism, prostitution and gambling. For the Argentine centennial in 1910, the AMUA organised the First International Women’s Conference, which Grierson presided over.
She was also an active supporter of the Argentine Freethinkers Association (AALP), which advocated rationalism, anticlericalism, a scientific approach to life, and full equality for women. The AALP had sought to join the CNM, but were rejected on account of their anticlerical views (opposing religious influence on civic/political matters). This contributed to Grierson choosing to leave the CNM and join the Women’s Socialist Centre. The CNM had organized the rightist First Patriotic Women’s Congress, and Grierson articulated her opposition Argentine feminists taking rightist views in her 1910 treatise Decadencia del Consejo Nacional de Mujeres de la República Argentina (Degeneration of the Argentine National Women’s Council).
Grierson was publicly recognised in 1914 for the 25th anniversary of her graduation and in 1916, when she retired from academia. She continued to teach and practice family medicine on a largely pro bono basis. She was given credit for only a few years’ service upon her retirement and received only a modest pension; she lamented most that she was never offered the position of chair of her alma mater’s school of medicine.
The nursing school she established in 1891 was renamed for her following her death. A street in Los Cocos and one in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires were named in her honor.