Mary De Garis

Mary Clementina De Garis (16 December 1881 – 18 November 1963) was an Australian doctor. During World War I she worked at the Ostrovo Unit in Serbia for the Scottish Women's Hospitals and after the war worked at Geelong Hospital in Australia. She was an advocate of antenatal and postnatal care.

Mary Clementina De Garis was born in Charlton, Victoria in 1881. She was the daughter of a Mildura clergyman and irrigation 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 of her year at the Methodist Ladies' College, Melbourne. In 1900 she enrolled in medicine at the University of Melbourne.

Mary De Garis was the thirty-first woman to enrol 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. She then travelled to the Australian outback to take up her first full-time position in Muttaburra, 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 and conducted a private practice in central Melbourne. In 1911 Mary De Garis travelled to the outback town of Tibooburra, western New South Wales to work at the hospital until 1915.

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