Significant women in medicine and dentistry

Dr Frances (Fanny) Gray (BDSc 1907) (1884-1958) examining a soldier’s teeth, c.1913, photograph. Fanny Gray was the first female graduate of the Faculty of Dental Science at the University of Melbourne in 1907.

Vera Scantlebury Brown (1889-1946), 1943, oil on canvas, by Winifred McCubbin (b.1893, d.1967). In 1926 Dr Vera Scantlebury Brown was appointed as the pioneer director of the Department of Infant Welfare, the first woman to head a government department in Victoria.

Photograph of Dr Mary De Garis from a family collection, 1905-1905. Mary De Garis (1881-1963) graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1905, and was the second woman in Victoria to gain a Doctor of Medicine, in 1907. During World War I she worked as a doctor with Allied governments and organisations, such as the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH) and Red Cross, eventually joining the SWH as a surgeon and chief medical officer.

Photograph of the University of Melbourne Senior Anatomy Class 1908. One of the three female students is Mary Glowrey, who eventually left private practice to work as a missionary in India in the 1920s. She was the first member of any Catholic religious order to be allowed to practise her profession as a doctor.