MEXICO CITY, January 26 (EL UNIVERSAL).- Matilde Montoya Lafragua (1859 – 1938) was the first Mexican woman to obtain a medical degree in 1887, she worked as a surgeon and obstetrician, she had the support of Porfirio Díaz to bring down the barriers imposed in the academy, which prevented women from dedicating themselves to science, meant a watershed to pave the paved road, on a professional level, for women.
Today, 82 years following his death, we remember some of his contributions.
During a conference given by the Women’s Museum, given by Dr. Ana María Carrillo Farga, from UNAM, she stated that Matilde Montoya was a student with good grades during her stay at the National Preparatory School. Later, during her time at the National School of Medicine, her mother, while she had the opportunity, accompanied her to some of her classrooms and waited for her, too, outside of them to return home together, she was the one who encouraged her in good times and dejection, as happened when he fell ill, during the fifth year of his professional training, for all this, he dedicated his thesis to his mother.
He presented two professional exams, one theoretical and the other practical, to which Manuel Romero Rubio, Secretary of the Interior, Porfirio Díaz, and journalists, of course, his mother, former colleagues, and personalities who stood out during that time. Matilde was the reflection of the natural right of women to become university doctors, because although there was a long history of indigenous medicine, there was not in the case of women and the degree.
The doctor shared that those who assured that medicine would not be open to women ignored Montoya’s achievement. While those who published the event, within the medical press, did so anonymously. One of them signed as “Zero to the left”, a colleague of hers who described that the doctor “honored herself and her country”, by marking the emancipation of women in study and science. Carrillo Farga indicated that it was time for a woman to break the code that considered women as an adornment of the salon or an object of pleasure.
Only the political press extolled this fact, “the most relevant event of the week: the scientific degree of Matilde Montoya”, which she achieved through dedication and effort, since it showed that women were endowed with the same intellectual capacities to approach disciplines once conceived as for the exclusive use of men.
In turn, Montoya’s contemporaries lauded this remarkable event. The women called her “sister of heart, redeemer of her sex”, for which they considered that her name was already inscribed in history, by opening the roads forbidden for centuries. She was conceived as a “science heroine”.
Despite the fact that Margarita Chorné graduated as a dentist a year earlier, the fact did not cause much of a stir, because at that time, the students who graduated in this profession did so only if they participated as listeners in the classes, since there was no places for women within this cerrera.
Another of its merits was that many students abandoned their medical studies before completing the six years of study. Instead, Montoya culminated his academic preparation with a thesis where he approached bacteriology as a fertile source that unraveled the mysteries of etiology, which studies the cause of diseases, a discipline little studied at the time.
She managed to have the corpses covered during the dissections, since she was criticized by conservatives and positivists for being a woman “lacking all modesty”, when examining the bodies of naked men, but she continued her anatomical studies in the amphitheater of the National School of Medicine,
Myth of the fragility of women
For centuries, men had refused to allow women to assume the role of scientist and doctor, as a strategy to keep their patients insured. In this way, questioning the capabilities of women was for men a way of legitimizing their political, economic and social power. They claimed that for every woman who attended the classrooms, a family was lost. In addition to this, they “theorized” that women had been conceived with highly developed organs to function with them, the uterus, unlike men, provided with these qualities through the brain.
Despite this, there were some professors who praised her perseverance during the lectures, encouraging other women to replicate the search for knowledge as Montoya did; the “montoyos”, was a group of followers, distributed among civilians; women and men who did not belong to the National School of Medicine, as well as intellectuals such as José María Vigil, a liberal journalist, who advocated access to education for women. Another of them was Manuel Soriano, who fought conservatives, also had the admiration of Francisco Montes de Oca, who provided him with the corpses of the Military College so that he might practice dissection.
“Clío”, as he became known in Freemasonry, being part of the lodge of Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, a character with whom he knew all his history, spread ideas regarding the importance of equality between women and men. He was also part of an antialcoholic league, and gave lectures that urged the population to abandon this practice, through theatrical performances that projected the effects of excessive alcohol consumption, recommended homeopathic therapy to combat it.
In 1915, during the typhoid outbreak, Montoya also recognized that lice might promote the manifestation of the disease. He retired from professional life at the age of 73, due to his delicate state of health, following 50 years of practicing medicine. Dr. Ana María Carrillo recalled that Matilde faced many difficulties, however, she considered that she had a position of greater ease because she was the first, since she supported with extended economic support, while the doctors who preceded her suffered some other difficulties in the dawn of the 20’s.
