User:ScienceMClearner/Laura Martínez de Carvajal

Laura Martínez de Carvajal y del Camino (27 August 1869 – 24 January 1941) was the first female doctor in Cuba[1]

Childhood
Laura Martinez Carvajal was born on 27 August 1869 in Havana, Cuba. She was the oldest daughter of a wealthy Spanish family who's social status brought about connections which enabled her parents to provide a good education to her and her siblings[5]. She was taught the social codes of high society while being reminded of always valuing human values [5]. Her family also made sure to give to others by starting with the people living in their neighborhood. She distinguished herself very earlier on for being a precarious child. At the age of 4 she could read and write[5], and at the age of 10 enrolled into high school [7].

Education
She enrolled in the college of San Francisco de Paula where she earned her bachelor and graduated at the age of 13 [5, 7]. One year later, after insisting that she should study along side her brother, her father enrolled her into the University of Havana, in the faculty of physical-mathematical sciences and medicine. Laura out-shadowed her peers which provoked jealousy [5, 6]. The professor at the Hospital de San Felipe y Santiago, place where the course on physiology and dissection took place, did not allow her to dissect with her peers because women were conventionally excluded from taking part in such activity. As an alternative, she worked on her own on the weekends [5,7] which turned out to be an advantage. She graduated as medical in 15 January 1889 and became first female physician and ophthalmologist of Cuba [5]

Personal
Father insisted that she finished school before getting married. She married cuban ophthalmologist Dr. Enrique López Veitía (well known ophthalmologist and initiator of the Medical Congresses in Cuba) in 20 January 1889, 5 days after graduating [5]. Together, they had 7 children which she cared for all while practicing her profession.

Career
She started practicing in the clinic that she and her husband funded, the clinical medical office Policlínica de Especialidades 2, 7.

She contributed in the preparation of her husbands famous report/book,/manual Oftalmologia clinica. It appeared in three volumes en 1891, 1895 y 1906 6,7

Collaborated in Notas fisiológicas, Observaciones clínicas y Ocular leprosy 7

End of life
Her husband died of tuberculosis in ... at the age of. She took over the clinic...

Near the end of her life she funded a public school for the kids who lived in her residence. 7

Carvajal died at the age of 75 on January 24th of 1941 in the municipal of Cotorro, Havana, Cuba from tuberculosis.