Lost Women of Science

• La Extraordinaria Vida y Trágica Muerte de Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo

  En la década de 1880, una pequeña niña Afro-Dominicana pasaba sus días vendiendo dulces en las calles de San Pedro de Macorís, una bulliciosa ciudad portuaria en la República Dominicana. Abandonada por sus padres, quienes la tuvieron por fuera del matrimonio, su futuro parecía gris: en esta sociedad profundamente estratificada, pocas personas lograban escapar de la vida en la que habían nacido.Pero Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo tenía algo que hacía que los demás se fijaran en ella. Así ocurrió con dos hermanos influyentes, ambos poetas e intelectuales, quienes reconocieron en ella una mente brillante y un espíritu tenaz. Con el apoyo de ellos, Evangelina logró hacerse un camino inimaginable: convertirse en la primera mujer médica de su país.En esta temporada de cinco capítulos seguiremos a Evangelina mientras estudia medicina, primero en su país natal y luego en París, donde aprende nuevas técnicas en el campo emergente de la ginecología y se encuentra con ideas radicales sobre la salud de las mujeres, ideas que espera transformen la sociedad de su país natal. Poco imaginaba que sus nuevos enfoques sobre la salud femenina eventualmente la llevarían a su trágica caída. Las contribuciones de Evangelina Rodríguez como reformadora y pionera de la salud pública serían prácticamente borradas por el dictador cuyo régimen la persigue hasta su muerte. Aquí reconstruimos su vida y su legado. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• The Extraordinary Life and Tragic Death of Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo

  In the 1880s, a small Afro-Dominican girl spent her days selling sweets on the streets of San Pedro de Macorís, a bustling port town in the Dominican Republic. Born out of wedlock and abandoned by her parents, her horizons seemed narrow — in this deeply stratified society, few people ever broke free from the life they were born into.But Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo had something that made people take notice. Two influential brothers, both poets and intellectuals, recognized a brilliant mind and a tenacious spirit. With the brothers’ support, Evangelina went on to chart a path that was unheard of for any Dominican woman at that time: she became her country’s first female doctor.In this five-part season, we will follow Evangelina as she studies medicine, first in her home country, then in Paris, where she learns new medical techniques in the emerging field of gynecology and encounters radical ideas about women’s health: ideas that she hopes will transform her society back in the Dominican Republic. Little does she think her new approaches to women’s health will eventually lead to her tragic downfall. Evangelina Rodríguez’s contributions as a reformer and pioneer in public health were all but erased by the dictator whose regime hounds her to death. Here, we piece together her life and her legacy.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• Lost Women of Science Conversations: Lady Tan's Circle of Women

  Lisa See’s novel Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is inspired by a medical textbook published in 1511  by an eminent female doctor, Tan Yunxian. In this episode, we talk to See about the origin of her novel, and to Lorraine Wilcox, the scholar who translated the original Chinese text, about what the practice of medicine was like for a female doctor during the Ming Dynasty. Tan Yunxian was almost lost to history, but the chronicle of her cases was reprinted by a great nephew and, amazingly, one copy survived through the centuries. Through serendipitous scholarly connections, Wilcox translated it and See used that translation as the inspiration for her novel. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• Who Discovered the Cause of Down Syndrome ? Episode Two

  In 1960 Marthe Gautier left the lab where she had discovered the genetic cause of Down syndrome, and went on to have a successful career as a pediatric cardiologist. For decades, she remained silent as her former colleague Jérôme Lejeune continued to take credit for this pioneering discovery, and history wrote her out of the story. Until 2009. On the 50th anniversary of the paper that announced the discovery of trisomy 21, she decided to set the record straight. The process of changing history did not always go smoothly. In 2014, at the age of 88, she was set to give a talk and receive a medal at a conference, but the event was canceled hours in advance, and she was given the medal privately the next day. Finally, toward the end of her life, Gautier got the recognition she deserved. Before she died in 2022, she was also decorated by the French government for her contributions to science.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• Who Discovered the Cause of Down Syndrome? Episode One

  In the mid-1950s Marthe Gautier, a young French doctor and cytogenetics researcher, led a cutting-edge experiment to investigate the cause of Down syndrome. She painstakingly cultured cells in a ramshackle lab until one day she discovered an extra chromosome in the cells of patients with Down syndrome. This proved beyond a doubt that Down syndrome is genetic.In this first episode of our two-part series about Gautier, she sees her discovery appropriated by a male colleague as he rushes to publish her findings. Jérôme Lejeune is listed as the lead author of the discovery even though Gautier did the work. Her name is listed second on this groundbreaking paper, published in 1959. And to add insult to injury, it is misspelled. It will take decades for Gautier to speak out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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