Cecilia Grierson

Cecilia Grierson (22 November 1859 – 10 April 1934) was an Argentine physician, reformer, nurse educator, feminist and prominent Freethinker. She had the distinction of being the first woman to receive a Medical Degree in Argentina.

Early life

Cecilia Grierson was born in Buenos Aires in 1859 to Jane Duffy, an Irish Catholic woman, and John Parish Robertson Grierson, a Scottish-Argentine Protestant. Her paternal grandfather William Grierson, a native of Mouswald in Dumfriesshire, was among the 220 Scottish colonists who arrived in Buenos Aires in August 1825 from Leith to settle Monte Grande.

Grierson spent her early childhood on her family’s estancia in Entre Ríos Province, where her family were prosperous farmers. At the age of six she was sent to attend English and French schools in Buenos Aires, but had to return home on the early death of her father. She assisted her mother in managing a country school, and eventually taught there. Grierson returned to Buenos Aires to enroll when she was fifteen, at the Nº 1 Girls Normal School, where she graduated as a teacher in 1878. She was appointed by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento as a teacher at a nearby boys’ school, and after a bereavement of a dear friend, Grierson decided to study medicine.

Medical career

Grierson faced entrenched opposition to her enrollment in medical school in 1883, including a supposed requirement for Latin, which was only taught in certain boys schools, and she was asked to provide written justifications for her motivation to become a doctor. Another woman, Élida Passo, had entered the Faculty of Medicine to pursue a degree of Doctor of Pharmacy, becoming in 1885 the first Argentine woman to earn a university diploma in Argentina. Passo overcame numerous rejected applications and returned to earn a Medical Degree. She became seriously ill while in the fifth year of medical school, however, and died in 1893 without a diploma.