Quick Facts
Biography
Laura Martínez de Carvajal (1869–1941) was the first female doctor in Cuba. She was the oldest daughter of a rich Spanish family, and learned to read and write at age four and finished high school at age thirteen. Because she was a woman, when she studied medicine she was not able to dissect corpses at the same time as her male classmates, but had to do so by herself on Saturday and Sunday. She graduated in medicine at age 19 in 1889, at the University of Havana. She also married in July 1889. She worked as an ophthalmologist; her husband, Dr. Enrique López Veitía, also worked as such and she became his chief assistant and cared for his patients when he could not. As well, she collaborated with him on many papers and three volumes of "Clinical Ophthalmology." She had seven children. Her husband died of tuberculosis in 1910 and she died of tuberculosis in 1941, at age 72.