The first university students studied taking advantage of a legal vacuum in the second half of the 19th century. One of them was Dolors Aleu, the first in Spain to practice medicine for more than 25 years.
She was also a pioneer in getting a doctorate, and she did it with a work on the drawbacks of the corset, a garment that oppressed the chest, hindered circulation and caused fainting.
Nearly three out of every four students currently studying medicine at the University of Barcelona (UB) are women, according to data from the center itself. Dolors Aleu (Barcelona, 1857-1913) lived a very different reality. She was the first woman to practice medicine in Spain during the second half of the 19th century.
His portfolio of patients ranged from the bourgeois ladies of the upper part of Barcelona, with whom he shared a social class, to the prostitutes of the Raval neighborhood. She specialized in gynecology and pediatricspassed consultation in the Rambla de Catalunya for more than 25 years, but also practiced charity in the Casa de la Caridad.
In addition, Dolors Aleu was the first woman to obtain a doctorate, with a work on the damages of the corset, in which she cites other female references such as Arenal Conception. “The life of women, from the most remote times, has been a continuous martyrdom”, she wrote in 1883 at the beginning of her doctoral thesisOf the need to direct the hygienic-moral education of women along a new path.
His portfolio of patients ranged from the bourgeois ladies of the upper part of Barcelona, with whom he shared social class, to the prostitutes of the Raval
More than a century later, one of his great-great-granddaughters, the actress Núria Cuyàs, vindicates that denunciation of the oppression of women, which continued as follows: “It is not surprising that in the days of obscurantism half of the human race was treated badly. What is strange, sad and ridiculous is that this martyrdom continues in the middle of the century of enlightenment”. That was his opinion on the corset“the garment that causes the most damage to the female organization”.
Cuyàs interprets these passages in Whale beards, a collective theater piece in which its four actresses appeal to collective memory and vindicate the grandmothers and women who preceded them. “It was a very rare animal for her time,” she says with a smile about her great-great-grandmother, who was also a professor at the Academy for the Enlightenment of Women and the first woman to enter the French Society of Hygiene.
A pioneer of sex education
The surviving writings of Dr. Aleu are scarce. One of them is the letter Advice from a mother to her children.
The love for her two children – both boys – and her condition as a doctor overcame the blush and “the moral and Christian education” that she had given them. In his letters he warned them of the “sea of dangers” of sexually transmitted diseases, which he considered terrible and destined to end the world.
“You will find them everywhere and in all social classes”, even in “Ladies of importance in Barcelona [sic]”; he wrote in 1900 about the gonorrhea and the syphilis. In the letter, Aleu says he feels obliged to warn them of these infections, despite the fact that his nerves “are ruffled” for writing about “this disgusting subject.” In the same way he qualifies masturbation, “a vice called onanism.”
In the letters to his children he warned them of the “sea of dangers” of sexually transmitted diseases
The original manuscript of the letter is preserved by the heiress of the family legacy, her great-granddaughter Dolors Cuyàs Robinson. She was transcribed by her niece Núria Cuyàs to reconstruct her family history. “It was the little we had, it was hard for me to understand her lyrics,” she recalls about the months of “research, imagination and interpretation of the figure of Dr. Aleu and the condition of a woman” for the dramaturgy of Whale beardsa title that refers to the material from which the corsets were made.
The premiere was on March 8 at the Maldà Teatre in Barcelona. The actress herself remembers being “nervous”, but she was so successful that she rescheduled. Her aunt, who was in the audience, tried to calm her down: “Dr. Aleu’s story doesn’t belong to our family, it belongs to everyone.” Dolors Cuyàs Robinson could not study because his father did not allow it, despite being the grandson of one of the first university students.
Two steps forward, three steps back
The first female university students at the end of the 19th century took advantage of a legal vacuum to study at a time when women could not even vote. That was how Aleu was able to attend class on Carrer del Carme, today the seat of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia. She did it accompanied by two escorts at the request of her father, who was deputy mayor of Barcelona and governor general of Catalonia, head of the municipal police.
However, Dolors Aleu was not the only woman of the time who wanted to study medicine. In the corridors of the faculty she coincided with two other women, Martina Castells y Elena Maseraswhich was actually –with only one year difference– the first university student in Spain, as stated consolation arrowprofessor at the University of Seville, in The first university women in Spain.
Upon finishing his studies in 1879, with a brilliant record, Aleu had to wait three years to take the bachelor’s degree exam in Madrid, which depended on a permit from the Ministry of Public Instruction. Those bureaucratic obstacles led Maseras to study teaching and he ended up devoting himself to teaching without ever practicing medicine. Nor did Castells, who received her doctorate three days later than Aleu, and who died very young due to a complication during his first pregnancy.
So Elena Maseras, Dolors Aleu and Martina Castells were “the first three Catalan female doctors of modern times”. She breaks it diplomatically in an article in the Gimbernat magazine Jacinto Corbella, who was dean of the Faculty of Medicine and vice-rector of the UB. This doctor, passionate about history, directly consulted the files of these women in the UB archive to find out who was the first to graduate, graduate and doctorate in medicine.
Aleu’s thesis is a revolutionary text for its courageous writing denouncing an oppressive situation and in defense of women’s rights
According to Corbella, Aleu’s thesis is a revolutionary text due to its brilliant, passionate and courageous writing denouncing an oppressive situation and in defense of women’s rights and feminism. In the same line, Miquel Brugueradirector of the academic studies unit of the Official College of Physicians of Barcelona (CoMB), points out that Aleu broke all the social, moral and intellectual molds of the time.
Unfortunately, after the academic adventures of these pioneers, women were not able to go to university with complete freedom until 1910. That year, a royal order from King Alfonso XIII recognized access to higher education for women as well, under equal conditions.
At that time, Aleu’s eldest son died of tuberculosis while he was studying medicine, following in his mother’s footsteps. The death of his son ended his vocation. He never practiced medicine again and two years later he died. “In my family, the idea that Dr. Aleu died of grief has survived to this day. Probably today we would say that she suffered from depression”, writes Cuyàs in a prologue that precedes the reissue of the thesis of her great-great-grandmother.
On the shoulders of giantesses
Physicist Isaac Newton is credited with the phrase On the shoulders of giants, a speech that refers to the collective progress of science. Although Dolors Aleu did not make any revolutionary contribution in the world of medicine, his relevance was undoubtedly social. That of a giantess on the shoulders of which other women rose.
Aleu’s eldest son died of tuberculosis while he was studying medicine. The death of his son ended his vocation
Its history gains strength with the celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, promoted by the United Nations (UN) since 2015. “It is necessary to continue fighting with the same force that Dolors Aleu did, because there is still a long way to go in relation to real equality between men and women, both in the professional field and in the family”, recalls Cuyàs.
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Corbella accompanies her in the claim: “It will not be a strictly clinical or scientific issue, but clearly a social one. And from this point of view, despite the fact that the circumstances have changed radically, it still seems justified today that the ideas and clamor of Dolors Aleu be disseminated towards the end of the 19th century”.
On the road to equality there are still many steps to be taken. Today in the university, despite the fact that six out of ten graduates are women, they still do not hold as many positions of responsibility as men. According to the latest CYD 2018 report, of every 100 professors only 20 are women and of 76 rectors there are 11 female rectors.