Lorena Galliot

2 weeks ago | scientificamerican.com | Laura Gomez |Laura Gómez |Lorena Galliot |Samia Bouzid

After Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo died in 1947, the Trujillo regime did its best to erase her legacy—while, at the same time, it appropriated her ideas. Yet those who had known and loved Rodríguez in San Pedro de Macorís, where she spent most of her life, kept her memory alive, sharing stories of her kindness and her work. After the assassination of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in 1961, Dominicans across the country started to recover her story.

4 weeks ago | scientificamerican.com | Laura Gomez |Laura Gómez |Lorena Galliot |Samia Bouzid

Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo, the Dominican Republic’s first female doctor, got a warm welcome on her return to the country from Paris in 1925. And she went straight to work, introducing her new ideas about health care for women and children. She set up a new medical practice and managed to get farmers to provide free milk for poor infants. But her proselytizing about contraception and her work with prostitutes made even her friends uncomfortable.