Mary Clementina De Garis (16 December 1881 – 18 November 1963) was an Australian medical doctor. During World War I she worked at the

Ostrovo Unit The Ostrovo Unit was a Field hospital unit with Transport Coloumn of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. It comprised approximately 200 tents and was situated near Lake Ostrovo, Macedonia during the First World War under the command of the Serbian ...

in Serbia for the

Scottish Women's Hospitals The Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Services (SWH) was founded in 1914. It was led by Dr. Elsie Inglis and provided nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, cooks and orderlies. By the end of World War I, 14 medical units had been outfitted and ...

and after the war worked at

Geelong Hospital The University Hospital Geelong, formerly the Geelong Hospital, is an Australian public hospital located in Ryrie Street, Geelong, Victoria. The hospital is part of Barwon Health, Victoria's largest regional health care provider, which has 21 s ...

in Australia. She was an advocate of antenatal and postnatal care.

Early life and education

Mary Clementina De Garis was born in

Charlton, Victoria Charlton is a town in Victoria, Australia. It is a small agricultural community straddling the Avoca River, located at the junction of the Calder Highway (A79) and Borung Highway (C239) and positioned in the last of the foothills of the Great ...

in 1881. She was the daughter of a

Mildura Mildura is a regional city in north-west Victoria, Australia. Located on the Victorian side of the Murray River, Mildura had a population of 34,565 in 2021. When nearby Wentworth, Irymple, Nichols Point and Merbein are included, the area h ...

clergyman and

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been devel ...

pioneer Elisha Clement De Garis, known as Elizee De Garis, and Elizabeth Buncle, a midwife. There were six children in the family: Mary and Elizabeth (twins), Clement,(known as Jack), Lilian, Alfred, and Lucas (known as George). In 1898 Mary De Garis was

dux ''Dux'' (; plural: ''ducēs'') is Latin for "leader" (from the noun ''dux, ducis'', "leader, general") and later for duke and its variant forms (doge, duce, etc.). During the Roman Republic and for the first centuries of the Roman Empire, '' ...

of her year at the

Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne ("For God and for Home") , established = , type = Independent, single-sex, day and boarding school , denomination = Uniting , slogan = "MLC girls become world-ready women"

. In 1900 she enrolled in medicine at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb no ...

. De Garis was the thirty-first woman to enroll in medicine from the University of Melbourne, awarded a Bachelor of Medicine (M.B.) in 1904 and Bachelor of Surgery (B.S.) in 1905. She was then appointed to two resident positions, at the Melbourne Hospital in 1905–06, and the Women's Hospital from 1906–07. In 1907, she became the second woman in Victoria to be awarded the Doctorate of Medicine.

Career

After graduation, De Garis travelled to the Australian outback to take up her first full-time position in

Muttaburra Muttaburra is an outback town and locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia. Muttaburra was the discovery site of the ''Muttaburrasaurus'', one of Australia's most famous dinosaurs. Geography Muttaburra is in the central west ...

, north-west Queensland. Subsequently, in 1908–09 she travelled to the United Kingdom and to the United States of America for fourteen months to further her professional development. Returning to Melbourne, she worked at the

Queen Victoria Hospital The Queen Victoria Hospital (QVH), located in East Grinstead, West Sussex, England is the specialist reconstructive surgery centre for the south east of England, and also provides services at clinics across the region. It has become world-fam ...

and conducted a private practice in central Melbourne. In 1911 Mary De Garis travelled to the outback town of

Tibooburra Tibooburra (pronounced or ) is a town in the far northwest of New South Wales, Australia, located from the state capital, Sydney. It is most frequently visited by tourists on their way to Sturt National Park or on the way to or from Inn ...

, western New South Wales to work at the hospital until 1915.

World War I

Wishing to be closer to her fiancé, Colin Thomson, who had enlisted for the Australian Imperial Forces, in 1916 she sailed back to London and worked at the Manor Hospital for five months. After Colin Thomson's death at the battle of Pozieres in August 1916, she joined the

organisation and was posted to the American Unit - also known as the

- in Macedonia, close to the

Balkan Front The Balkan Front was a military formation of the Bulgarian People's Army, intended for wartime use under the general direction of the Soviet General Staff. If a war was to have broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the bulk of the Bulgar ...

, from February 1917 to October 1918. Mary De Garis was the Chief Medical Officer for 14 months. De Garis was awarded the Serbian

Order of St Sava The Royal Order of St. Sava is an Order of merit, first awarded by the Kingdom of Serbia in 1883 and later by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was awarded to nationals and foreigners for meritorious ach ...

3rd Class

Post war and death

After the war, in May 1919, De Garis settled in Geelong, Victoria. Here she pushed for women to be members of the hospital general committee as well as for the first maternity ward to be included in the hospital. She was also responsible for antenatal and postnatal care being implemented at the hospital. In 1931 she was appointed as the Honorary Medical Officer to the Maternity Ward at the

until 1941 and then she became an Honorary Consultant to the Maternity Ward until 1959. She was the first and only female medical doctor in Geelong from 1919 to 1941. Conducting research into the causes of pain in labour and other obstetric matters, she published over 40 articles and letters in the British/Australian Medical Association journals as well as 5 books. Practising until 1960, she died in Geelong in 1963.

References

Bibliography

* Mary De Garis private papers * Ruth Lee (2014) ''Woman War Doctor: The Life of Mary De Garis'', (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing). * McClelland, J. (1996)''From Infirmary to Hospital: Geelong and District Hospital'' (Kitchener Memorial) 1924-1966 (Geelong: The Geelong Hospital) * Leneman, Leah (1994). ''In the Service of Life: The Story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women's Hospitals.'' The Mercat Press, Edinburgh * Hutton, I Emslie (1928). ''With a Woman's Unit in Serbia, Salonika and Sebastopol.'' Williams and Norgate, London * M.C. De Garis (1926) ''Clinical Notes and Deductions of a Peripatetic, Being Fads and Fancies of a General Practitioner.'' Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, London * M.C. De Garis (1930) ''The Theory of Obstetrics: A Functional Study of Child-Bearing.'' Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, London * Gilchrist, Hugh (1997). ''Australians and Greeks, Volume 2.'' Halstead Press, Sydney

External links

''Mary Clementina De Garis''

''Mary Clementina De Garis at the Australian Dictionary of Biography''
{{DEFAULTSORT:De Garis, Mary Clementina 1881 births 1963 deaths People from Charlton, Victoria Australian women of World War I Australian women medical doctors Australian medical doctors Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service volunteers 19th-century Australian women