Assimetrias da memória: trajetórias similares, lembranças desiguais – Maria do Carmo Sarmento e Bettina Ferro de Souza, médicas no Pará

Abstract

This article illustrates the trajectories of two female doctors from state of Pará-Brazil, graduated from the former School of Medicine and Surgery of Pará, now, School of Medicine of Federal University of Pará in the late 1930s, and who had important roles in Cardiology, which had only begun to establish itself as a medicine specialty at the time: Maria do Carmo Sarmento Carvalho and Bettina Ferro de Souza. The former, was the first to use electrocardiography in Belém-Pará, and, who was also a great activist for the Brazilian Communist Party; her pioneering, however, seems to have been forgotten. The latter, stood out both academically, by teaching at the School of Medicine and also, in the Cardiology field, thus becoming some kind of patroness of this specialty in Belem-Pará. The differences between these two women will be presented and discussed in order to try and find the possible reasons why one is celebrated while the other was somewhat erased in the memory of people.