Ermelinda Lopes de Vasconcelos
Ermelinda Lopes de Vasconcelos was a Brazilian doctor. She was the second female doctor to graduate from university in Brazil and the first in Rio de Janeiro state. As an obstetrician she is said to have been present at over ten thousand births.
Early life and education
Vasconcelos was born in Porto Alegre in Rio Grande do Sul state on 23 September 1866, the daughter of Joaquim Lopes de Vasconcelos and Firmiana dos Santos. At the age of eight, she moved with her family to Rio de Janeiro, where her father worked as a bookkeeper at the Companhia de Navegação Fluvial.At the time, one of the only ways for girls to remain in the education system after primary school was to study to become teachers. Vasconcelos graduated from the Escola Normal de Niterói, a teacher-training school, in 1881 but had no real intention to become a teacher. In 1884, after much pressure from his daughter, her father consented for her to enrol at the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro. Her ability to gain admission to the university had been made possible by an imperial decree only passed in 1879 that prohibited discrimination against women in higher education. There were two other women taking the same course, Rita Lobato and Antonieta César Dias.
Vasconcelos obtained a degree in medicine in 1888 with a thesis entitled Clinical forms of meningitis in children: differential diagnosis". An interesting aspect of her thesis hearing was that the evaluation panel was chaired by Emperor D. Pedro II. She became the first woman to graduate as a doctor in Rio de Janeiro and the second in Brazil, after Lobato, who had begun her studies in Rio de Janeiro but transferred to the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia and completed her studies in 1887.