Houston (Tex.)

Taxonomy

Code

Scope note(s)

Display note(s)

Hierarchical terms

Houston (Tex.)

Equivalent terms

Houston (Tex.)

  • UF Houston, Texas

Associated terms

Houston (Tex.)

233 Authority record results for Houston (Tex.)

233 results directly related Exclude narrower terms

Desmond, Murdina M., 1916-

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n94801680
  • Person
  • 1916-2003

Dr. Desmond was born in the Hebrides Islands of Scotland in 1916. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was 7. She attended Smith College on scholarship, graduating in 1938, and obtained her M.D. in 1942 from Temple School of Medicine. Following her internship and six months of pediatric residency, Dr. Desmond joined the U.S. Naval Reserve as a physician and actively served through World War II, including time at Pearl Harbor.

Postwar, she completed her pediatric training and a fellowship in newborn research. In 1948, she moved to Houston, Texas to join the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine in the Pediatric Department which at that time consisted of four faculty members and two residents. In 1950, Baylor became affiliated with the former Jefferson Davis Hospital and a newborn service was established. Dr. Desmond became the first head of the newborn care section in the Pediatric Department.

In 1956, Dr. Desmond and two other physicians were alarmed at the death rate from staphylococcus infections at Jefferson Davis Hospital, the then city-county hospital. The doctors declared the nursery unsafe and closed it to any more admissions. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Desmond began the first neonatal intensive care unit in the nation at the hospital. Dr. Desmond also worked with infants born with drug addictions. She developed the transitional nursery in which at risk infants were under close observation for potential medical problems. Infants who were seriously ill were placed in a separate unit, which became the first newborn intensive care unit in the southwestern states of the United States. Until Jefferson Davis Hospital closed, Dr. Desmond served as director of nurseries and as pediatric coordinator of its Maternal and Infant Care project.

During the outbreak of rubella in 1963-64, Dr. Desmond worked with about 200 affected infants and children. She recognized that many at-risk infants, whom medical care was able to save, developed conditions that required comprehensive evaluation and long-term care. In 1973 she became the director of the Leopold Meyer Center for Developmental Pediatrics at Texas Children's hospital. During this period she was on the team which cared for David Vetter, the "Bubble Boy." The Desmond Neonatal Developmental Follow-up Clinic, named for Dr. Desmond, was established in 1994 to provide logitudinal follow-up and neurodevelopmental assessments for pre-term babies.

Dr. Desmond received the Apgar Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics; the Stanley Kalinski Award from the Texas Pediatric Society; and awards from Smith College and Temple University among others.

Dr. Desmond married James L. Desmond who she met while serving in the Naval Reserve. They were married after the war and then moved to Houston, Texas, where her husband had a dental practice until his death in 1972. She and her husband had two children. Dr. Desmond passed away in 2003.

Bruch, Hilde, 1904-1984

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50055887
  • Person
  • 1904-1984

Hilde Bruch was born in Dulken, Germany on March 11, 1904; her family was Jewish. An uncle encouraged her to study medicine and she graduated from Albert Ludwig University with a doctorate in 1929. She took academic and research positions with the University of Kiel and then the University of Leipzig, but left academia for private pediatric practice in 1932 because of rising anti-Semitism. She had already begun a career in pediatric physiology before she left Germany in 1933 after Hitler came into power. She then spent a year in England, where she worked at the East End Maternity Hospital, which served a Jewish community in an impoverished part of London. She moved to the United States in 1934 and worked at the Babies’ Hospital at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. She obtained her American medical license in 1935 and, in 1937, began research on childhood obesity, the beginning of her career studying eating disorders. She became an American citizen in 1940.
From 1941 to 1943 Bruch studied psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore before returning to New York to open her own psychiatric practice and teach at Columbia University. She took a position in psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1964 and remained in Houston for the rest of her life. She died on December 15, 1984.

Starck, Patricia L.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr92024521
  • Person

Dean Patricia L. Starck was born in Georgia. She earned a masters’ of nursing from Emory University and a doctorate of nursing in 1979 from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. She is also a graduate of the Institute of Educational Management at Harvard University and a licensed nurse practitioner and clinical nurse specialist in mental health and psychiatry. She served as dean of the UT Health Science Center from 1984 to 2014 and continues to serve the UTHSCH as Vice President of Interprofessional Education.

Memorial/Hermann Healthcare System

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2006183770
  • Corporate body
  • 1997-

Memorial Hermann Health System was formed in 1997 by a merger of Hermann Hospital and Memorial Health System. Both preceding institutions dated to the early 20th century, Hermann to 1925 and Memorial to 1907, and the merger created one of the biggest not-for-profit healthcare systems in the United States at the time. The System has branches all over the Houston area and its base location is one of two in the Texas Medical Center with a Level I trauma center.

University of Texas Speech and Hearing Institute

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n87117925
  • Corporate body
  • 1951-1992

The University of Texas Speech and Hearing Institute was founded in 1951 as the Houston Speech and Hearing Clinic. It joined the UT system in 1971 and for a year was the Division of Communicative Disorders of the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston. In October 1972 it was renamed the University of Texas Speech and Hearing Institute at Houston and became part of the UT Health Science Center at Houston. Struggling with reduced state funding, fewer resources for faculty and research, and diminished demand for educational programs, its services were taken over by the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast and the Institute closed on October 31, 1992.

University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85224997
  • Corporate body
  • 1905-

The Texas Dental College was established in Houston in 1905. It operated in the upstairs quarters on the north side of Franklin avenue between Main street and Fannin street. In 1925, the dental college built a modern teaching facility at Fannin street and Blodgett avenue. In 1929, the Texas Dental College was re-incorporated as a public trust under the direction of a board of trustees charged with the responsibility of providing quality training in the dental disciplines.

In 1932, Dr. Frederick C. Elliott from the University of Tennessee was brought on to serve as dean of the college. At this time in Houston the depression has cast an economic blight over the land. He was hoping for a freshman class of 30 to 40 but ended up with 11 students registered. Dr. Elliot became active in Chamber of Commerce committee work and, through service on the Educational Committee, pointed to the community’s needs for greatly expanded medical teaching and healing facilities. He developed a “total care” concept, calling for both public and private funds to provide facilities and services to meet the health and medical needs of all the citizens. Dr. Elliott quietly started discussions with Dr. Homer P. Rainey, the president of the University of Texas, and others in the University system, to lay the ground work for affiliation of the dental college with the university, with the dental college to remain in Houston as perhaps a unit in a medical teaching center which Dr. Elliott and Dr. E.W. Bertner sought for the community. On May 13, 1941, harry B. Jewett, chairman of the Chamber of commerce Educational Committee, on which Dr. Elliott then was serving, jumped the gun when he informed the Executive committee that the University of Texas would take over the dental college on September 1, 1941, and operate it as a unit of the University system. The official announcement did not come until August 29, 1942, contingent upon legislative approval and appropriation of state operating funds. The Legislature did approve, and on May 14, 1943, Governor Coke Stevenson signed the bill authorizing the affiliation.

The University took over the dental college as of September 1, 1943 leaving Dr. Elliott as the dean. Later, Dr. Elliott was named vice president of the University System. With the state cancer hospital already assured for Houston, and as further inducement for the University to take over the dental college, the Anderson trustees agreed to provide a site in the proposed medical center for the college and to donate $500,000 towards the cost of a building. In 1946 the Anderson trustees offered to provide an additional $1.5 million to the cancer hospital and the dental college. The two University institutions then approved for location in the medical center on a basis of $1 by the Foundation for each $2 provided by the State of Texas. The dental college trustees, all of whom had been active in seeking the affiliation were: Dr. Walter Henry Scherer, president; Dr. Joseph Phillip Arnold, vice president; Dr. Robert Henry Hooper, secretary; Dr. Paul Veal Ledbetter, Dr. Judson L. Taylor, and Dr. Elliot, ex officio secretary and dean of the college. Legislative approval of the affiliation of the dental college with the University, and appropriation of $109,000 for support of the college, remained to be accomplished in the regular session of the Texas Legislature, which convened early in 1943. Dr. Elliott met with the Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee on February 2,1943, to seek support in the legislature. Dr. Elliott reported to the committee on March 16, 1943, that the Senate and House committees had approved the legislation and complimented Representative Emmett Morse of Houston in handling the bill. A most important factor influencing favorable legislative action was the program embarked upon by the Texas Dental College to train dentist for the Army and Navy. Today the University Of Texas School Of Dentistry occupies handsome quarters in the Texas Medical Center, provided by funds from the State of Texas, the M.D. Anderson Foundation and the Houston Chamber of Commerce.

Haas, Felix L.

  • Person
  • 1917-

Dr. Felix Levere Haas was born on October 26, 1917 in Alvin, Texas, the oldest son of three children. The Alvin native entered the University of Texas at Austin in 1939. His studies were interrupted with the onset of World War II. Haas en listed in the United States Army Air Corps. He received aviation training from January 5, 1942 - September 5, 1942. As a navigator he led numerous combat missions with the 13th Air Force over the South Pacific. He served until February 22, 1946 and was promoted to the rank of Captain.
In June of 1947, Haas received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Genetics and Bacteriology from U.T. He was awarded the Rosalie B. Hite Predoctoral Fellowship and continued to study for his Masters of Arts. Drs. Wilson S. Stone and Orville Wyss were pleased to have Haas as their research fellow. While experimenting he made an important discovery in the genetics of micro-organisms. He found that irradiation of the growth medium resulted in genetic mutations in bacteria when they were grown in it. In short, a biochemical basis must be present to produce mutations.
Felix Haas continued his research earning his M.A. in August of 1948. That same year he met Cathryn E. Swausch, Dr. Wyss' laboratory assistant. They worked closely together for the next two years and were married on January 21, 1950. By June, Dr. Haas received his doctorate in Biochemistry and Biology.
The Haas couple left the University of Texas at Austin for the California Institute of Technology, where Dr. Haas accepted a one year (1950-1951) postdoctoral fellowship in Genetics from the Eli Lilly Company. At the Institute he worked with Drs. George Beadle and Herschell Mitchell. The following year he was awarded a USPHS Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. With the outbreak of the Korean War Dr. Haas was recalled to active military duty. As a result he had to decline the fellowship.
Upon his return to Texas, Dr. Wilson Stone arranged for him an indefinite delay in the re-activation orders. He also made it possible for Dr. Haas to work as a research scientist for the Atomic Energy Commission. He conducted his research on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin and the Old Baker Estate in Houston (M.D. Anderson Hospital). Professor Stone and Dr. Haas worked closely until March of 1953.
The Bristol Laboratories Inc. of Syracuse, New York offered him the position of Senior Microbiologist. In his three years (1953-1956) with Bristol Laboratories he directed research on: improving by genetic mutations mold strains (Penicillium) used for the commercial production of penicillin; developing the Actinomycete strains which led to the production of tetracycline by fermentation (this production method and strain are currently responsible for the largest part of the world's supply of tetracycline). Dr. Haas also taught graduate students at the University of Syracuse. As an Associate Professor of Genetics he taught Genetics and Radiation Biology.
Dr. and Mrs. Haas and their three young sons left Syracuse, New York in May of 1956 and returned to Houston. The M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute appointed him head of the Department of Biology (1956-1975). His responsibilities included recruitment of faculty, formulating research and teaching policies, long-range planning and investigating funding sources.
From 1973 to 1975 Dr. Haas also served as Assistant to the Director of Research at M.D. Anderson Hospital.
Dr. Haas resigned as head of the Department of Biology in 1975 to assume the full duties of coordinating the research program of the hospital. He supervised and directed the Office of Research and served as advisor to the director and president on all matters concerning research at M.D. Anderson Hospital. In 1979 he accepted the position of staff assistant to the president.
On approval of the Board of Regents, the request for establishment of the UT GSBS was presented to the Texas Legislature, and was passed in Spring 1963. Governor John Connally signed the bill into law on June 10, 1963. By action of the Board of Regents the authorized school was established on September 28,1963.
Dr. Haas was a key figure in the founding of UT GSBS at Houston. He served as an important member of many special and standing GSBS Committees.
Between UT SCC, M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute and UT GSBS at Houston Dr. Haas was an active member of nearly twenty committees. They include: Education; Curriculum; Committee on Graduate Studies; Dean's Administrative Committee; Faculty Classification Committee. Virtually, every year since 1949, Dr. Haas has been a principal participant in national and international symposia and conferences. He has written forty three articles and nineteen abstracts. Dr. Haas lists memberships in the following professional and scientific societies: American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society of Microbiology, Genetics Society of America, American Academy of Microbiology, American Institute of Biological Sciences, Radiation Research Society, American Association for Cancer Research, American Genetic Association. He has been honored by Phi Theta Kappa, Sigma Xi, listed in Who's Who in the South and Southwest and American Men of Science.
Dr. Felix L. Haas' leadership, knowledge and skill were essential to the success of established and new programs organized by UT SCC, M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute and UT GSBS at Houston. Dr. Haas retired in 1981 to enjoy his love of art, music, and spend time with his wife, Cathryn and their three sons, Michael, Stephen and Larry.

Cooper, Alan B.

  • Person
  • 1928-2002

Alan Bruce Cooper was born in New York, New York on August 19, 1928. He earned a BS in 1949 and a Master’s in immunogenetics in 1951 from Wesleyan University, followed by an MD in 1955 from New York Medical School. After serving as chief of pathology at Harvard University, he joined the Air Force. After his discharge as a major, he taught at Baylor College of Medicine and New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. He was also in private practice in Houston between 1968 and 1985. In 1986, Dr. Cooper was appointed medical director of the University of Texas Adult Ambulatory Psychiatric Services and was later a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He died in Houston on December 29, 2002, of lung cancer.

Medical Arts Publishing Foundation

  • Corporate body

Medical Arts Publishing Foundation was a brainchild of Dr. R. Lee Clark, president of M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center (1946-1978). Through collaboration between Dr. Clark and Russell W. Cumley, the publishing company developed the Cancer Bulletin in 1948 as a fun, visual and entertaining medical journals to draw attention to the history of cancer research. Their initial vision was to create a “highly readable pictorial magazine for the general practitioner” that would increase early diagnosis of cancer. Other publications, Heart Bulletin in 1952 and Psychiatric Bulletin in 1951, followed that highlighted the history and studies in cardiology and psychiatry. Each publication had its own distinct style and motif. Joseph F. Schwarting was the Art Director and principle artist for all publications. The group of artists were based international and locally in Houston. Other artists include Eva Marie Schubart, Imelda Schubart, Peter Spier, Jo Spier, George Shackelford, Mary Shackelford, and Joseph Doeve. Medical Arts Publishing Foundation also published the regional journal, Medical Record and Annuals, with Joe Schwarting creating the cover art.

Otto, Dorothy

  • Person
  • d.2020

Dorothy Otto, EdD, MSN, RN, ANEF was an Associate Professor of Nursing Systems at the Cizik School of Nursing at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
When the University of Texas School of Nursing in Houston was created in 1972, she came on board as a founding faculty member. She also served as acting dean from 1975-1977. Continuing to teach until her retirement in 2015, Otto became a go-to source on the history of the School.
Otto was a world traveler and combined this interest with her professional life. For roughly a decade, she served as Academic Leader for Nursing International Journeys—trips that introduced colleagues to health care practices in places like Egypt, Russia, China, and elsewhere. She had a particular interest in Florence Nightingale and visited the Nightingale Museums in London and Istanbul.
Interested in the history of nursing, Otto amassed a collection of nursing-related stamps from the U.S. and other countries.
Otto parlayed her collections, travels, and long history at the University of Texas in Houston into lectures and presentations about the history of nursing, as well as its development in Houston and Texas.
Dr. Otto received her BSN from the University of Houston in 1954; her MSN from Texas Woman's University in 1971; and her EdD from the University of Houston in 1985. She started her nursing career in McAllen, Texas, before coming to Houston in 1972.
Dorothy Otto died January 4, 2020.

Source: https://www.uth.edu/news/story.htm?id=ca4f2d0e-ce7c-4bee-9130-6ed37226d990

Harris County Hospital District

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2008077807
  • Corporate body
  • 1965-

The Harris County Hospital District was created by voter referendum in November 1965 and formalized with taxing authority in January 1966. Its creation followed the publication of Jan de Hartog’s The Hospital, an expose of the conditions at Jefferson Davis Charity Hospital (opened 1924). The District replaced a contentious city-county system in which both were responsible for support of the hospital. Quentin Mease was a founder and chairman of the District.
Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital opened in 1989. In 1990, emergency facilities at Lyndon B. Johnson and Ben Taub (1963) Hospitals were expanded and Harris County residents began to be assigned to each by ZIP code to better manage caseloads. HCHD was renamed Harris Health System in 2012.

Detering, Herman E., III

  • https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85015611.html
  • Person
  • 1938-2015

Herman Eberhard Detering, III, was born July 2, 1938, in Houston; his father H.E. Detering, Jr. (1902-1977) was also born in Houston and his grandfather H.E. Detering, Sr. (1862-1927), was born in Germany but came to Houston in 1871. Detering, Sr., was the founder of The Detering Company Building Supplies, which is still operated (as of 2020) by the family. H.E. Detering, III was the longtime owner of the Detering Book Gallery, a rare bookstore in the Houston area. He died March 21, 2015

Cady, Lee D., 1896-1987

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2004020308
  • Person
  • 1896-1987

Lee D. Cady, MD (1896-1987) graduated Washington School of Medicine in 1922. He served in both World War I and World War II. During World War II he served as the commanding officer of the 21st General Hospital in Northern Africa and Europe. Upon returning home after World War II, he assumed the role of director of the V.A. Hospitals in Dallas then Houston before his retirement from the Houston V.A. Hospital in 1963. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Cole, Thomas R.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85123512
  • Person
  • 1949-

Thomas R. Cole was born in 1949 in New Haven, Connecticut. He graduated with his bachelor’s in Philosophy from Yale University in 1971, and he would finish his Master’s in History in 1975 at Wesleyan University. Dr. Cole obtained his PhD. in History from the University of Rochester in 1981.

Dr. Cole has held many faculty positions at various universities throughout his career. The bulk of his work and research was and is conducted between 1982-2019 at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He has worked in several departments: the Institute for Medical Humanities, School of Public Health, Department of Family Medicine, Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, Institute for the Medical Humanities, and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. His research conducted here has been dedicated to the writing of several articles, books, and films on Aging and (Humanistic) Gerontology. Dr. Cole’s work is concerned with how society and the medical field view Aging and the ethical practice of medicine, especially within Geriatrics. He has published several books and articles on Aging that have been published in a variety of medical journals and international publications. Dr. Cole’s work also reflects the passion he has for autobiography and the telling of an individual’s ‘story.’ Cole has hosted several writing workshops and other programs to help people record their life’s memories. This passion has also led him to produce films such as The Strange Demise of Jim Crow and books such as No Color is My Kind: The Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston. He has earned numerous awards and mentions for his extensive work.

As of 2020, Dr. Cole was the McGovern chair in the Medical Humanities Department as well as the Director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center. He has served on several committees. Dr. Cole plans to publish Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among the Elders in the Fall of 2019; this book’s research materials are now found within his papers.

Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center

  • Corporate body
  • 1975-

The Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center opened January 1, 1975 and, in association with the Blood Center of East Texas and the Blood Center of Brazos Valley, serves 26 counties and over 170 institutions in the Texas Gulf Coast region, including the Texas Medical Center in Houston.

Murad, Ferid

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no96063323
  • Person
  • 1936-2023

Ferid Murad, M.D., Ph.D., was born in Indiana in 1936. He graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1958 and went on to complete an MD-PhD program at Western Reserve University in Cleveland and attended Massachusetts General Hospital for his internship and residency. Later, he went on to work with the NIH as a clinical associate in the Heart Institute as well as with the University of Virginia, Stanford, Abbott Laboratories, and the Molecular Geriatrics Corporation. He came to Houston in 1997 to work with the University of Texas Health Science Center.

At UTHealth's McGovern Medical School in Houston, Murad was the inaugural chair of the Department of Integrative Biology, Pharmacology, and Physiology. He also served as Director of the Brown Foundation Institute for Molecular Medicine.

Murad was a co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work with nitric oxide and cyclic GMP. He was awarded alongside Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro.

Murad died Sept. 4, 2023 in Menlo Park, Calif. He was 86.

Sources:
“Ferid Murad – Biographical.” Nobelprize.org. Les Prix Nobel, 1998. Web.
"In Memoriam: Ferid Murad, MD, PhD," McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, Scoop Newsletter, Week of September 7, 2023.

Ronald McDonald House (Houston, Tex.)

  • Corporate body
  • 1981-

Ronald McDonald Houses provide a home-like place for families to stay while their children are receiving treatment in the hospital. The Houses were the idea of Fred Hill of the Philadelphia Eagles football team, when he and his wife needed a place to stay while their daughter Kim underwent treatment for leukemia at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The first Ronald McDonald House opened in Philadelphia in 1974. Houston’s first Ronald McDonald House, funded in part by the Houston Oilers, opened at 1550 La Concha lane, near the Astrodome, in 1981. It had 21 bedrooms but was soon outgrown and replaced with a 50-bedroom House nearer the Texas Medical Center, near Holcomb Boulevard and Cambridge Street, in 1997. There is also a 20-room House inside Texas Children’s Hospital (2002) and a 14-room one inside Children’s Memorial Hermann (2007).

Fernbach, Donald J.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n83157715
  • Person
  • 1925-2013

Donald Joseph Fernbach was born April 10, 1925 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in the European Theater and earned a Bronze Star during World War II. He earned his Bachelor’s from Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee, in 1948 and his MD from George Washington University School of Medicine in 1952, and came to Houston to study pediatrics as one of Baylor College of Medicine’s first residents. He also completed a residency at Children’s Medical Center and Harvard University School of Medicine in Boston, followed by a fellowship in hematology and oncology. He returned to Houston in 1957 to join the faculty at Baylor and helped found the Research Hematology-Oncology Service (now the Children’s Cancer Center) at Texas Children’s Hospital in 1958.

Dr. Fernbach coauthored the first textbook on clinical pediatric oncology, led the effort to screen for sickle cell disease in newborns, and was the first to transplant bone marrow between identical twins to treat aplastic anemia. He was the director of the Blood Transfusion Services at Texas Children’s from 1957 to 1971. He was one of the founders of Houston’s Ronald McDonald House and led the movement to ban smoking in the Texas Medical Center.

Dr. Fernbach died September 22, 2013, in Houston and is buried at the Houston National Cemetery.

Schnur, Sidney

  • Person
  • 1910-1997

Sidney A. Schnur (June 23, 1910 – April 8, 1997) was born in Manhattan, New York and earned his MD from New York University in 1935. He was a physician and a clinical assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, and he served as president of the Harris County Medical Society in 1972.

One of Schnur’s patients at St. Joseph’s Hospital, near death from cardiogenic shock (when the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs) after a heart attack, was the test for Denton Cooley’s heart-lung machine in April 1956; the patient lived another six weeks before succumbing to a second heart attack.

McCarty, Daniel J.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79053864
  • Person
  • 1928-

Dr. McCarty was born in Pennsylvania, possibly in Upper Darby, on October 31, 1928. He earned is BS from Villanova in 1950 and his MD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1954. He was a rheumatologist specializing in pseudogout, gout, and rheumatoid arthritis who taught in several academic institutions, including Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago medical school, and the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He came to Wisconisn in 1974 after seven years at the University of Chicago and supervised the founding of the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Arthritis Institute in 1989. He was a visiting professor at the University of Texas Medical School.

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. School of Public Health

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79121188
  • Corporate body
  • 1969-

The Texas Legislature approved the formation of a school of public health in 1947 but did not allocate funds until 1967; the first class entered in the fall 1969. It became part of the UT Health Science Center when that was organized in 1972. The main campus remains in Houston in the Texas Medical Center but there are satellite campuses, tailored to the needs of their respective communities, in San Antonio (1979), El Paso (1992), Dallas (1998), Brownsville (2000), and Austin (2007). The school comprises four departments: Biostatistics and Data Science; Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences; Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences; and Management, Policy, and Community Health. The school also supports thirteen research centers.

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. School of Nursing

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n91091727
  • Corporate body
  • 1972-

The Jane and Robert Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth opened in 1972 in the Nurses’ Residence at Hermann Hospital as the University of Texas School of Nursing. It was to be the clinical campus of the UT System’s school of nursing, which was based at UTMB in Galveston. It moved into the Hermann Professional Building Annex shortly after, then to the former Prudential Life Building at 1100 Holcombe in 1974. The Houston setting became an official campus of the UT System Schools of Nursing in 1973, alongside Galveston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, and Fort Worth/Arlington. The first class graduated in 1974. Also in 1974 the School proposed a Master’s of Nursing degree (the first students would enroll in 1976) and specialized programs in gerontology, oncology, and psychiatric mental health nursing. In 1976, the School of Nursing joined the UT Health Science Center. The school continued to expand, adding specialized courses of study and Doctorate of Nursing degrees. It was renamed the Cizik School of Nursing in 2017.

University of Texas Medical School at Houston

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80082446
  • Corporate body
  • 1970-

The University of Texas Medical School at Houston was approved by Governor Preston Smith in 1969. Cheves Smythe, M.D. was appointed the first dean. The first class enrolled in 1970 but was divided among three cities; the first class to complete all its studies in Houston enrolled in 1971. Its John J. Freeman Building was completed in 1972 and the School joined the UT Health Science Center consortium in 1973. The Medical School building sustained serious flood damage in both 1976 and 2001; the damage by Tropical Storm Allison took three years to rebuild. It was renamed the John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Medical School in 2015 following a gift from the McGovern Foundation.

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84075298
  • Corporate body
  • 1972-

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston is a public health science educational institution. It was created in 1972 by the University of Texas and comprises the UTHealth School of Dentistry (1905), UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics (1972), the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (1963, renamed 2017), the John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern School of Medicine (1969, renamed 2015), UTHealth School of Public Health (1969), and the Jane and Robert Cizik School of Nursing (1972, renamed 2017). Its teaching hospitals include Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, and Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital. It also encompasses a long list of smaller centers and institutions that perform work specialized to different illnesses, disciplines, and areas of interest.

Texas Medical Center

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85810360
  • Corporate body
  • 1946-

The Texas Medical Center is a comprehensive medical community located south of downtown Houston. It comprises 54 institutions, including four medical and seven nursing schools, 21 hospitals, three level-I trauma centers [8], eight specialty institutions, and academic and research institutions for many other health-related disciplines[9]. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is among the top-ranked cancer hospitals in the country[10]. As of 2017, it is one of the largest medical centers in the world[7].

The Texas Medical Center was proposed by Horace Wilkins, Col. William Bates, and John H. Freeman, the trustees of the M.D. Anderson Foundation. Established by cotton magnate Monroe Dunaway Anderson in 1936[1], the Foundation supported a variety of small causes until Anderson’s death in 1939, at which point the trustees, with the encouragement of Ernst Bertner, M.D., and Frederick Elliott, D.D.S., decided the funds should be used to build a medical center on par with Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic[2]. When, in 1941, the state legislature approved an act to create a cancer hospital[3], the Anderson Foundation trustees secured Houston as the location for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital, which would become first component of the medical center. The Texas Medical Center would be located on a site adjacent to Hermann Hospital, which had opened south of downtown in 1925.

The Texas Medical Center was officially incorporated in 1946 and Bertner was appointed president, replaced at the Cancer Hospital by R. Lee Clark, M.D. The Cancer Hospital was quickly joined by the Dental College, by then affiliated with the University of Texas[16], and Baylor University College of Medicine, which moved from Waco. The Anderson Foundation made grants to Methodist Hospital, Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital, a new building for Hermann Hospital, and for a library[15].

The Texas Medical Center grew quickly and has provided a home for innovators such as heart surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley; William Spencer and his work on rehabilitation of paralysis patients; trauma surgeon and medevac pioneer James “Red” Duke; and Nobel Prize-winning pharmacology researcher Ferid Murad[17].

SOURCES:

[1-5] TMC History 1971
[6] Handbook of Texas Online, Ernst W. Bertner.
[7] Facts and Figures, About Houston, City of Houston, 2017 July 24, www.houstontx.gov/abouthouston/houstonfacts.html
[8] Texas Trauma Facilities, Texas Health and Human Services, Texas Department of Health and Human Services, 2017 July 24, https://www.dshs.texas.gov/emstraumasystems/etrahosp.shtm.
[9] “Texas Medical Center: Houston is where the world comes for treatment”, About Houston, Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau, 2017 July 24, https://www.visithoustontexas.com/about-houston/texas-medical-center/
[10] Institutional profile, Facts and History, 2017 July 24, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, https://www.mdanderson.org/about-md-anderson/facts-history/institutional-profile.html.
[12] Handbook of Texas Online
[13] New York Times, 1994 May 05, online.
[11] Mary Schiflett obituary, Houston Chronicle online, January 19, 2007.
[14] Bryant Boutwell, Ph.D, Bout Time blog, 2014 January 31
[15] TMC History 1971, p178
[16] Handbook of Texas Online, University of Texas Dental Branch
[17] TMC News, 2014 August 19

Wainerdi, Richard E., 1931-

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no94021624
  • Person
  • 1931-2021

Born November 27, 1931, in New York City. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in petroleum engineering. He worked for many years at Texas A&M University and then at Gulf Oil, retiring in 1984 when Gulf Oil was acquired by Chevron. Then he spent 28 years as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer of the Texas Medical Center. Dr. Wainerdi died on March 17, 2021.

University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n88044598
  • Corporate body
  • 1944-

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is named for Monroe Dunaway Anderson who, with his brother-in-law Will Clayton, operated what came to be the biggest cotton company in the world by the earliest years of the Twentieth Century. When he died in 1939, his MD Anderson Foundation received $19 million from his estate. In 1941 when the Texas Legislature set aside $500,000 for a cancer hospital and research center, the Anderson Foundation agreed to match funds if the institution were located in Houston, in the new Texas Medical Center, which was also an Anderson Fund project, and if it were named for their benefactor.
The M.D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research at the University of Texas opened in 1944 and operated out of surplus World War II army barracks; the converted mansion The Oaks, of the James A. Baker estate near Rice University; and 46 beds leased from a local hospital (which hospital?) before moving into the original building of its current location in 1954. TMC co-founder R. Lee Clark served as the first full-time director. The world’s first cobalt-60 radiotherapy unit, designed by UTMDA’s Dr. Gilbert H. Fletcher and Dr. Leonard Grimmett, began treating patients in the underground (for safety) clinic on February 22, 1954. The rest of the patients were transferred to the new building three weeks later and the hospital was formally dedicated on October 23. The name was changed to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in 1955. The hospital and its capabilities expanded rapidly over the next decades; it installed the first high-voltage Sagittaire linear accelerator for radiation therapy in 1970 and began the US’s first interferon trials in 1978. The name was changed to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 1988.

Clark, Randolph Lee, 1906-

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50039822
  • Person
  • 1906-1994

Randolph Lee Clark was born July 2, 1906 to Randolph Lee Clark, Sr., teacher and president of several Texas colleges including Texas Christian University, and Leni Leoti Sypert, musician and teacher. As the son and grandson of college presidents, he lived with role models whose optimistic outlook and ideals nurtured his untiring ability to work toward the goal of containing and possibly curing cancer. After his father’s death, he preferred to be known as R. Lee Clark.

Dr. Clark’s early medical career as Chief Resident at the American Hospital in Paris and as a Fellow at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota laid the foundation for concepts that became the cornerstone of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. His military service enabled him to meet surgeons and physicians from throughout the United States and to exchange ideas and plans for postwar institutions. He was appointed Director of Surgical Research for the U.S. Army (Air) Medical Corps as well as Consultant to the Air Surgeon General. Clark’s successes were recognized by the Regents of the University of Texas and in 1946 he was asked to develop what would become the nation’s first cancer hospital within a university system.

In Houston, he started work with 22 employees in the house and stables cum carriage-house of a donated family estate. The stables housed research laboratories for biochemistry and biology. Dr. Clark located surplus Army barracks, had them moved to the estate grounds, and converted them to a clinic. During this time, employees, including some ex-military associates, were recruited to expand M.D. Anderson Hospital. A story then circulating told of one employee asking another if he had noticed how ‘vague’ Dr. Clark was when discussing salaries, benefits, laboratory space, and other necessities. The second employee replied, “Oh, no, ‘vague’ is much too precise a word.”

Lee Clark had vision, energy, and the ability to inspire the generosity of major businessmen in Houston and citizens throughout Texas. The M.D. Anderson Foundation was also a benefactor. At that time, the Texas Medical Center was expanding and M.D. Anderson Hospital became one of its cornerstones. Dr. Clark collaborated with city, state, and eventually national and international leaders in medicine whose intent was to consider the problem of “incurable” cancer patients and to find a solution.

Clark married Bertha Margaret Davis, MD, an anesthesiologist from Asheville, North Carolina, on June 11, 1932. They had two children, Randolph Lee and Rabia Lynn. Lee Clark died May 3, 1994.

For more information, please consult:

Cancer Bulletin 31, no.2 (1979) : special edition.

“Contemporaries: Randolph Lee Clark, M.D.” Modern Medicine Publications, 30 Oct. 1972, 35-37.

The First Twenty Years, of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute. Houston, TX: U.T. M.D. Anderson Hosptial and Tumor Institute, 1964.

LeMaistre, Charles A, MD. “R. Lee Clark in memoriam.” Cancer, 74, no. 4 (1994) : 1513-15.

Macon, N. Don. Clark and the Anderson: a personal profile. Houston, TX: Texas Medical Center, 1976.

“M.D. Anderson’s R. Lee Clark.” Mayo Alumnus, April 1969, 14-15.

Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n81015967
  • Corporate body
  • 1915-

The origins of the library date back to 1915, when the Houston Academy of Medicine (HAM) established a small library in downtown Houston to serve the Harris County Medical Society. This Library was combined with the Baylor College of Medicine’s (BCM’s) small library in 1949 to form a centralized collection. As more institutions joined the Texas Medical Center, they also shared the resources of the TMC Library, thereby creating a unique point of collaboration among the institutions of the TMC.

A permanent home for this new library was built in the early 1950’s, through the efforts of HAM and BCM. Jesse H. Jones contributed funding for the construction, and in 1954, the approximately 27,000 square foot, three-story “Jesse H. Jones Library Building” was dedicated. By 1975, a new addition to the building had added another 76,000 square feet for the Library’s growing collection. At this time, the Library officially became known as the Houston Academy of Medicine – Texas Medical Center Library. Today the library uses the shorter operating name of The TMC Library.

The McGovern Historical Center (MHC) is the rare book and archive department for the library. The earliest acquisition records for the books in the MHC are found in the Houston Academy of Medicine’s (HAM) Library Committee reports for 1935 and 1936. Thirty Fellows of the Academy raised $300 to purchase a collection of 275 French medical books published between 1730 and 1830. In 1949, HAM and Baylor College of Medicine combined their medical libraries. In anticipation of the completion of the Jesse H. Jones Building for the library, the MD Anderson Foundation purchased the rheumatology collection of a New York physician, Dr. Reginald Burbank. This purchase was followed by a gift from the Cora and Webb Mading Foundation of more than 1,000 titles on sanitation and communicable diseases. After the 1954 dedication of the library building, many physicians donated books or historical pamphlets to be stored in a very small, locked room on the second floor. Soon after his arrival in Houston, Dr. McGovern became one of the Library’s most staunch supporters, annually supplying funds for the purchase of rare books and travel support for the librarians to attend meetings of the American Association for the History of Medicine. In 1977, The Library formed a new department with new quarters to collect historical materials and to enhance the rare book collections. In 1982, Dr. McGovern donated his personal collection of rare and historical book to the Library. In 1996 the Library’s Board of Directors named the historical department in his honor.

Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library

  • Corporate body
  • 1960-

The Friends were incorporated in 1960 to “assist in the development, improvement, and expansion of facilities, services, and functions of the Texas Medical Center Library, and to support its administration. It shall be the purpose of the organization to secure gifts and bequests and provide funds for books, journals, rare books and manuscripts, and whenever possible for library equipment, lectureships, and scholarships, and for any other purpose which would be beneficial to the” Library. The collection was donated by James Greenwood III, who is apparently the son of James Greenwood, Jr., MD, who has a small collection in the TMC Library archives.

Dippel, A. Louis

  • Person
  • 1901-1991

Adelbert Louis Dippel was born in Ehlinger (now Ellinger), Texas, near LaGrange in Fayette County, on July 10, 1901. His grandparents all emigrated from Germany around 1850. His family wanted him to become an engineer but he had decided on medicine when he was twelve and admired the family doctor who treated him for malaria. He attended Blinn College in Brenham before earning both a B.S. and an M.S. from the University of Texas in 1924, then an MD from UTMB in 1928. Renal calculi kept him out of the service during World War II. Dr. Dippel was an instructor and associate professor in obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University from 1934 to 1940, then at the University of Minnesota from 1940 to 1943; he was head of that department in 1943 and 1944. He then returned to Texas to take positions at Baylor College of Medicine and UTMB, where he remained until he retired in 1977. He died in Tacoma, Washington, on September 6, 1991.

Greenwood, James Jr.

  • Person
  • 1907-1993

James Greenwood Jr. was born on July 19, 1907, in Seguin, Texas. He received a B.A. degree from the Rice Institute in 1927 and an M.D. degree from UTMB in Galveston in 1931. He interned at the Philadelphia General Hospital before returning to Houston and serving as Chairman of the Division of Neurosurgery at the Methodist Hospital from 1936 to 1980. He began teaching at Baylor College of Medicine in 1943 and was active in many medical societies as well as an organizing member of the Houston Surgical Society. He was the first neurosurgeon in Houston and the Southwest United States. An innovator in his field, he invented the bipolar coagulation forceps and developed bipolar electrocoagulation, which enabled surgeons to staunch bleeding while irrigating incisions to prevent tissue from overheating and incurring more damage. He was the first neurosurgeon in the world to successfully remove intramedullary spinal cord tumors. He died July 3, 1993, in Houston, Texas.

Shelton, Elvin L.

  • Person
  • 1914-1991

Elvin Lee Shelton, Jr., was born November 3, 1914 in Alvarado, Texas. He earned his BS from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1936 and his MD from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1939. After his residency at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Shelton served thirty-six months overseas in the Army. e came to Houston in 1948 and served on the staff of St. Luke’s, Bellaire, Twelve Oaks, Methodist, and other hospitals. He also taught at both Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Medical School until his retirement in 1987. Dr. Shelton died July 19, 1991, at St. Luke’s Hospital.

de Hartog, Jan

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n78095785
  • Person
  • 1914-2002

Jan de Hartog was born April 22, 1914 in Haarlem, Netherlands. He ran away as a young teenager and took jobs on fishing boats, as a coal shoveler, and as a tour boat captain. He wrote in his spare time, published a series of mystery novels, and started a career in theater in the late 1930s.
In May 1940, ten days before Germany invaded, de Hartog published Holland’s Glory, a novel about ocean-going tugboat captains. The book was not political but because of the title and thoroughly-Dutch subject it became a bestseller and drew the attention of the Gestapo. De Hartog had already joined the Dutch resistance movement and had to flee to England, where he continued resistance work alongside like-minded British. He eventually became a pacifist and joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). His years in England introduced his work to English-language audiences and he produced several successful books and plays.
De Hartog moved to the United States in the late 1950s and married his third wife, Marjorie Hein. In the early 1960s, the de Hartogs and others became aware of the poor conditions at Jefferson Davis Hospital and the ongoing dispute over whether the city or county was responsible for its funding. The expose The Hospital spurred the formation of the Harris County Hospital District (now Harris Health System).
De Hartog died September 22, 2002, in Houston. He and Marjorie were long-time members of Houston’ Live Oak Friends Meeting. This VHS was donated by the Drexler family, who were also members of LOFM; their daughter Alethea was an assistant at the John P. McGovern Historical Collections at the Texas Medical Center Library.

University of Texas School of Nursing PARTNERS

  • Corporate body
  • 1994-

PARTNERS (Providing Advancement Resources to Nursing Education, Research, and Students) was formed in 1994 through the leadership of Dean Patricia L. Starck, PhD, RN, FAAN, and Margaret A. “Peggy” Barnett, founding chair of PARTNERS.

The organization was established to encourage and support the students and faculty of the Cizik School of Nursing through scholarships, research grants, and endowed professorships. PARTNERS has contributed more than $15 million in support of the Cizik School of Nursing, including 200 full-tuition scholarships for students, 63 research grants for faculty, and four endowed professorships. PARTNERS has also raised funds to build and equip research facilities.

Texas Medical Center Historical Resources Project

  • Corporate body
  • 1970-1991

In the early 1970s, leaders within the Texas Medical Center recognized the importance of documenting the stories behind its formative years. In response, Dr. William Seybold, TMC President Richard Eastwood, historian Don Macon and others set in motion the Texas Medical Center Historical Resources Project. With the support of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center—including use of its recording studio—Macon and others began creating a series of video interviews featuring early leaders and other influential figures in the TMC.

Over the years, the project’s focus expanded to “video profiles” that also included significant visitors to the TMC. Given M. D. Anderson’s involvement, it’s no surprise that several of these feature national and international figures in cancer research on their visits to Houston.

From the beginning, copies of the interviews were presented to the TMC Library so they would be available for research. Later, most of the master tapes (3/4” U-matics), also made their way to the McGovern Historical Center for preservation. The collection of interviews now archived at the MHC includes conversations with thirty-eight different interviewees spread across forty-seven unique recordings. Including duplicates, there are nearly one hundred tapes.

Karnaky, Karl John, 1907-1988

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2003070674
  • Person
  • 1907-1988

Karl Karnaky was born November 7, 1907, in Barham, Louisiana and died May 29, 1988, in Houston, Texas. His parents were from Germany and Austria-Hungary. Karnaky graduated in pre-medicine from Rice University (then the Rice Institute) in 1930 and went on to study medicine at UTMB. He registered for the draft in 1940; he was working out of the Medical Arts Building at the time. In 1940, he treated a five-year-old Houston girl for tumor-induced precocious puberty; the case was compared to that of Lina Medina, a Peruvian girl who gave birth at age five. He taught at Baylor College of Medicine in the late 1940s. He was the director of Menstrual Disorder Clinic at Jefferson Davis and was on staff at Hermann, Park View, Heights, St. Joseph’s, Memorial, and Methodist Hospitals. In the 1960s and 1970s he worked at the Obstetrical and Gynecological Research Institute [and Foundation], Houston.

Rogillio, Lucile Baird

  • Person
  • 1903-1992

Lucile Baird Rogillio worked for Robert Jolly at the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Houston, TX in the early 1920s. She began working as a P.B.X. operator then moved into the front office. She was married to George William ("Bill") Rogillio.

Spencer, William A. (William Albert), 1922-2009

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n95803665
  • Person
  • 1922-2009

William Albert Spencer born on February 16, 1922 in Oklahoma City. He went to Georgetown University for his Bachelor’s degree and was first in his class in medical school at John Hopkins University. Beginning in 1951 Dr. Spencer would lead staff at Baylor College of Medicine to address the polio epidemic. This research paved the way for Baylor to become one of the most prominent rehabilitation facilities in the country. He would become founder of The Institute of Rehabilitation and Research, or TIRR, which opened its doors on May 30, 1959. Today the hospital is officially part of the Memorial Hermann Hospital system. Throughout his life Dr. Spencer would treat patients, often children and young adults, and conduct research regarding traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injuries. Dr. Spencer served twenty-eight years as TIRR’s president and became known as the “Father of Modern Rehabilitation”; hospitals around the globe modeled their rehabilitation programs after it (Wendler, 2009, p.16). The TIRR was a facility ahead of its time under Dr.Spencer’s leadership. After the development of personal computers, Dr.Spencer petitioned IBM to link the computers (now known as networking) at TIRR and Baylor College of Medicine.
In his nonmedical life, Dr. Spencer would tinker with a number of inventions or other projects. These engineering projects would lead him to develop the physiography, which ended up being an early version of its predecessor the EKG. Dr. Spencer was married twice, first to Helen Hart in 1945 and then to Jean Amspoker in 1984. Jean predeceased him in 2005. Dr. Spencer died on February 18, 2009.

Ruiz, Richard S.

  • Person
  • 1932-2021

"Richard S. Ruiz, MD, was born in Houston on July 12, 1932. He established the Hermann Eye Center in 1977. A native Houstonian, Ruiz attended Texas A&M and graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 1957. During his internship at Hermann Hospital, Ruiz decided to specialize in ophthalmology. He was accepted at the Kresge Eye Institute in Detroit for a three year residency to train in ophthalmology, and then received a fellowship to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary of the Harvard Medical School where he trained under Charles L. Schepens, MD, who is known as the “father” of modern retinal surgery. In July 1962, Ruiz returned home and opened his ophthalmology practice in the Hermann Professional Building. He worked diligently to build his practice and during the next ten years, founded Houston Eye Associates, brought highly trained subspecialists into the partnership, and was appointed Chief of Ophthalmology at Hermann Hospital. Along with practicing medicine, Ruiz worked to improve the hospital’s training program for new eye doctors.

In 1969, the University of Texas formally announced that it would establish a medical school in the Texas Medical Center, with Hermann Hospital as its primary teaching hospital. When details emerged about plans for Hermann’s new hospital building, a facility that would be interconnected to the Medical School and the hospital’s Robertson Pavilion, Ruiz began to develop an idea to utilize space in the new building to create a world class eye center. His plan would bring together his private ophthalmology practice, Hermann Hospital eye patients, and the teaching and research of the Department of Ophthalmology at the medical school into one endeavor. Ruiz’s appointment as Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology in the new medical school enabled him to take the final steps to create a comprehensive eye center. In time, the Hermann Eye Center became known for excellence in patient care, education, and research in ophthalmology.

Ruiz served as Chief of Ophthalmology at Hermann Hospital (later Memorial Hermann – TMC) from 1967 until 2009. He was the founding director of the Hermann Eye Center and the Hermann Eye Fund, and chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the University of Texas Medical School – Houston for the first thirty-seven years of its history." (1)

Dr. Ruiz died September 22nd, 2021.


  1. This biographical note is a direct quote from the book cover of: Ruiz, Richard S. and William H. Kellar. Ophthalmology at Hermann Hospital and the University of Texas, Houston: A Personal Perspective. N. p. 2010.

Elliott, Frederick C.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2004006056
  • Person
  • 1893-1986

Dr. Frederick C. Elliott was born in Pittsburg, Kansas on October 26, 1893. He worked for a short time as a pharmacist.

In 1918, he received his doctorate in dentistry from Kansas City Dental College. The following year he taught at the same institution as an instructor of Histology and Clinical Dentistry. For the next four years, 1919-1923 he served as Professor of General and Dental Pathology and eventually Superintendent of Clinics at Kansas City-Western Dental College. Dr. Elliott accepted the position of Superintendent of Clinics in 1928 at the University of Tennessee, College of Dentistry. In that same year on April 28 he married Ann Orr.

Houston became Dr. Elliott's home in 1932 when he accepted a Professorship of Dental Prosthesis and Deanship at the Texas Dental College. He was instrumental in getting the Texas Dental College to become part of the University of Texas System. From 1943 to 1952 he served in both academic and administrative posts in the University's School of Dentistry.

Dr. Elliott's vision, dedication and perserverance were instrumental in the growth and development of the Texas Medical Center. He campaigned tirelessly on behalf of the Dental Branch and the Texas Medical Center. Under his leadership as Executive Director and Secretary of the Board of Directors, 1952-1963 over $120 million dollars of capital improvements were planned and completed. Even after his retirement Dr. Elliott continued to lend support and encouragement to the Texas Medical Center.

Dr. Elliott wrote and spoke extensively on the University of Texas System and the Texas Medical Center. In the 1950s and 60s Dr. Elliott, Dr. James P. Hollers and others were active participants in the structuring of the South Texas Medical Center in San Antonio.

In addition to his administrative and teaching responsibilities Dr. Elliott was an active member in many professional associations and organizations, including : American Dental Association, Tennessee State Dental Association, Houston District Dental Society - Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science - Fellow, Texas Academy of Science, Texas State Dental Society, Federation Dentaire Internationale, International Association for Dental Research. He also lent his energies and expertise to government service, civic and business organizations and hospitals.

Dr. Elliott has received numerous awards, honors and citations. The William John Gies Award (1973) from the American College of Dentists, the Gold Medal Award from the Pierre Fauchard Academy (1960), Dentist of the Century in commemoration of the Houston District Dental Society Centennial on May 16, 1959 are just a few of his earned distinctions.

Dr. Elliott was a deeply religious and patriotic individual. His concern for humanity fueled his efforts for excellence in teaching and health care systems. On December 31, 1986 the Texas Medical Center lost one of its most industrious founders

Bates, William B., 1889-1974

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2021014471
  • Person
  • 1889-1974

William B. Bates was born August 16, 1889 in Nat, Texas. He and his siblings attended local schools at Nat and in a place called Red Flat. In 1910, He attended Sam Houston Normal Institute where he earned teaching certificates. After teaching for a few years, he went on to study law at the University of Texas, graduating first in the class in 1915.
Bates served in the United States Army from 1917 to 1919 during World War I. When he returned, he opened a law practice with his brother, Jesse, and married Mary Estill Dorsey. In 1923, he was hired by Fulbright and Crooker, a law firm in Houston. The title "colonel" was bestowed upon W.B. Bates by his friend, former Governor of Texas Dan Moody.
William B. Bates had an enormous impact on the growth and development of Houston, almost from the moment he arrived. He became a member of the Houston Independent School District Board of education in 1925. The University of Houston was established under his chairmanship. William B. Bates also served the Houston Chamber of Commerce for many years. He was on the advisory board of the, then famous, Bank of the Southwest.
In 1939, William B. Bates became chairman of the Board of Trustees of the M.D. Anderson Foundation upon the death of its benefactor, Mr. Anderson. Col. Bates' foresight and leadership contributed to the creation and growth of the Texas Medical Center. W.B. Bates died on April 17, 1974.
For more information about Col. Bates, please refer to N. Don Macon's book South from Flower Mountain: A Conversation with William B. Bates (Houston : Texas Medical Center, 1975)

The Doctors' Club

  • Person
  • 1954-2005

The Doctors' Club began in 1954 as a social club for doctors and dentists and their families at The Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. The Doctor's Club also hosted medical lectures and various medical groups. The Doctor's Club closed in 2005.

Greater Houston Dental Society

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n88095511
  • Corporate body
  • 1904

The Greater Houston Dental Society, formerly the Houston District Dental Society, was founded in 1904 and serves as the Houston-area chapter of the Texas Dental Association and the American Dental Association. It seeks to provide public and professional health education.

Blattner, Russell J.

  • Person
  • 1908-2002

Russell John Blattner was born July 3, 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Washington University there. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1929, and his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1933. He took his hospital training with an internship at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, and his residency at St. Louis Children's Hospital, and then at Princess Elizabeth of York Hospital for Children in London, England. He returned to St. Louis and in 1937, began his teaching career as an Instructor in the Department of Pediatrics in the Washington University School of Medicine. In 1940 he was promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor in his department. Three years later, in 1945, he advanced to the rank of Associate Professor.

His career in Houston began in 1947 when he was given the position of Professor of Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. He was actively involved with the creation of the Texas Children's Hospital, beginning in 1948 when with architects he toured hospitals in Canada, Mexico and the United States in search of ideas for the soon-to-be-built Houston institution. His efforts came to fruition in 1954, when the new pediatric hospital opened its doors. Dr. Blattner worked continually to insure the success and development of Texas Children's Hospital as a sub-specialty hospital care hospital for children and as a teaching and research institution, and to promote excellent pediatric care throughout the Texas Medical Center, as well as in Harris County by developing an affiliation between Baylor and the city and county health departments. He helped to establish the Blue Bird Clinic at The Methodist Hospital, and was instrumental in securing the initial funding for the South Western Poliomyelitis Center which would later become the Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research.

Dr. Blattner had a long and distinguished career for which he often received recognition from his colleagues within the medical profession. In 1956 the Washington University School of Medicine Alumni awarded him their Alumni Citation for Outstanding Achievements and Service He was also designated Distinguished Service Professor at Baylor in 1968. In 1971 he was given the newly established J.S. Abercrombie Chair in the department of Pediatrics at Baylor. He was honored again in 1972 and in 1974, when he received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Baylor College of Medicine Alumni Association and the American Medical Association's Abraham Jacobi Award. He became Emeritus Chief of Pediatrics at Hermann Hospital. He retired in 1977, but continued his affiliation with the Texas Medical Center by acting as a consultant to hospital and college, and as Distinguished Service Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor. In his retirement years he became affiliated with the Well Baby Clinics for the City of Houston Health Department, where he continued his care for the pediatric subject and his academic interests by training Baylor students assigned to the clinics.

Dr. Blattner served his profession not only as an administrator and teacher but as a research scientist as well. He made major contributions in the field of infectious disease, most notably in the study of encephalitis. He was, moreover, noted for his concern and compassion because he ''combined specialization with old-time empathy and concern with each patient (WATCH, Spring 1977). He died December 6, 2002, in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Burdon, Kenneth L.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2011184007
  • Person
  • 1895-1985

Kenneth Livingston Burdon, MD, was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1895. He was educated at Brown University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1922. Dr. Burdon served with the U.S. Army Sanitary Medical Corps, (1918-1919), taught at Washington University School of Medicine (1922-1935) and then at Louisiana State University School of Medicine (1935-1943). Kenneth Burdon, MD is recognized as the Founding Chair of the Department of Microbiology Baylor University College of Medicine (1943-1961). He was awarded Professor Emeritus of Microbiology in 1961.

Dr. Burdon’s research and publications feature the following topics: “characterization of a group of aerobic spore-forming bacilli, especially Bacillus anthracis, and on immediate-type hypersensitivity. He also worked on development of an antibiotic to treat tuberculosis. He was a director of an NIH-supported Fellowship Training Program in Allergy and Immunology in conjunction with the Department of Pediatrics from 1958 to 1967. Dr. Burdon authored six editions of a widely used textbook Microbiology, first published in 1939. He also authored a Medical Microbiology textbook.”

Dr. Burdon retired in 1967 and passed away in 1985. Further information and a bibliography of Dr. Burdon’s papers are available in the first folder of this collection.

Citation:"Kenneth L. Burdon, Founding Chair, Microbiology." Baylor College of Medicine. Accessed February 21, 2016. https://www.bcm.edu/departments/molecular-virology-and-microbiology/about-us/history-of-the-department/kenneth-l-burdon.

Methodist Hospital (Houston, Tex.)

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84053213
  • Corporate body
  • 1924-0000

Methodist Hospital was established near downtown Houston in 1924. It is currently located on Fannin Street in the Medical Center and serves as the teaching hospital for Baylor College of Medicine.

Macon, N. Don

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n95019842
  • Person

University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50080776
  • Corporate body
  • 1970-

in 1962 there was a request, led by TMC co-founder R. Lee Clark, MD, to establish a graduate school of biomedical sciences in Houston. The UT Graduate School of BIomedical Sciences was approved by Texas House Bill 500 on October 14, 1963, with approval for Master’s of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in “biology, including, but not restricted to, areas of emphasis in radiobiology, biomathematics, generics, cytology, fine structure-electron microscope-analysis, molecular biology, with biochemistry and biophysics, microbiology, and virology. Biochemistry including, but not restricted to, areas of emphasis in molecular biology and chemical physiology. Physics including, but not restricted to, areas of emphasis in biophysics, nuclear medicine, and isotope studies. . . . with the stipulation that all areas of emphasis to be added in the future shall come within the three categories listed above (I.e. biology, biochemistry, and physics) and that the areas of emphasis be restricted to biomedical sciences that are adapted to the research facilities of the M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute.”
The University of Texas Medical School was established in 1970, also under the administration of the University of Texas, and its basic science faculty were assimilated into the Graduate School, where before they had worked through MD Anderson Cancer Hospital or occasionally the Schools of Dentistry and Public Health. In 1972, all of these schools were collected into the UT Health Science Center. As of 2001, graduate degrees in biomedical science that would formerly have been awarded through the UT Health Science Center or UT MD Anderson Cancer Center would be awarded through the GSBS. The name was updated in 2017 to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences to reflect the longstanding partnership between the two institutions.

Institute of Religion (Houston, Tex.)

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n77013883
  • Corporate body
  • 1955-

The Institute of Religion, now known as the Institute of Spirituality and Health, was founded in 1955 by members of the Houston medical and religious communities. The Institute established the first medical ethics center and one of the first hospital chaplaincy programs in the United States. The Institute conducts lectures on subjects related to medical ethics, healthcare, spirituality and well-being.

St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital (Houston, Tex.)

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82127374
  • Corporate body
  • 1945-

St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital opened in 1945 as a private general hospital. It became affiliated with Texas Heart Institute in 1962 and Baylor College of Medicine in 2004. Catholic Health Initiatives acquired it in 2013 and the official name is CHI St. Luke's Health System.

Hermann Hospital (Houston, Tex.)

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n92089041
  • Corporate body
  • 1925-1999

Hermann Hospital was a public hospital endowed by George Hermann (1843-1914) with a fortune accumulated through investments in oil and real estate. The hospital opened south of downtown Houston in the summer of 1925. It merged with Memorial Hospital in 1999 to create Memorial Hermann Health System. The original Spanish-style building is now part of Children's Memorial Hermann in the northwest corner of the Medical Center.

Texas Woman's University

  • https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79150431.html
  • Corporate body
  • 1901-

Texas Woman's University was founded in 1901 in Denton, Texas, as the Texas Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls of the State of Texas in the Arts and Sciences; the current name dates to 1957. It began the first nationally accredited nursing program, affiliated with Dallas' Parkland Hospital, in Texas in 1950 and began awarding doctorates in 1953. It became integrated in 1961 and coeducational in 1994. The health science and nursing programs have additional campuses in Dallas and Houston.

Texas Children's Hospital

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79032728
  • Corporate body
  • 1954-

Texas Children’s Hospital admitted its first patient in February 1954 and is among the largest pediatric hospitals in the US. It is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and was a contributor to the establishment of the Texas Heart Institute. Over the decades, it has pioneered treatments such as in-home care for respiratory failure; separation of conjoined twins; treatment and management of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID); biosynthetic growth hormone treatment; laser therapy for seizure disorders, early diagnosis and treatment of cystic fibrosis, and pediatric HIV. It has branches all over the Houston metro area, in Austin and operates a pediatric HIV/AIDS clinic in Uganda.

Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n86842836
  • Corporate body
  • 1920-2021

The Shriners Hospital for Children (Houston) is one of 22 hospitals in the non-profit Shriners network and is affiliated with the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Scott and White Hospital (based in Temple, Texas). The Houston branch had its origins in the Arabia Temple Crippled Children’s Clinic, which was located at Baptist Sanitarium between 1920 and 1932. The Clinic moved to Methodist Hospital in 1932, occupying its own “Blue Bird Cottage” from 1934 to 1949; the facility was named for its sponsors, Methodist’s Blue Bird Ladies Auxiliary. Between 1949 and 1952 it borrowed space in Hermann Hospital, before reopening in its own building in 1952. It was renamed Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in 1966. The last building was completed in 1996. In January 2020, Shriners Houston announced that it would close in 2021 and consolidate with the Shriners burn hospital in Galveston.

Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80007985
  • Corporate body
  • 1955-1985

The Texas Research Institute of Mental Sciences was founded as a Baylor College of Medicine project in 1955 and funded by the state legislature in 1957 as the Houston State Psychiatric Institute for Research and Training. It was under the administrative management of the Board for Texas Hospitals and Special Schools, with the requirement that it act as the research and training branch of the state mental health and intellectual disability service system. TRIMS originally occupied a mansion on Baldwin Street, borrowed from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (then M.D. Anderson Hospital); the research laboratories were in the carriage house. (Side note: Was this the Baker Estate?) It moved into its own building in 1961. That building, recognizable for its Midcentury design that featured series of arches in its roofline and glass exterior tile, was demolished in 2010 and the Institute moved into the Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences Building near Old Spanish Trail and Cambridge Street. The hospital branch was relocated to a nearby building in 1968 but the 1961 building continued to house the offices and library. The TRIMS name was adopted in 1967. A 1985 scandal relating to the validity of research data prompted a reorganization and transfer to the UT Health Science Center, during which it was renamed the University of Texas Mental Sciences Institute. The service role of the UTMSI has decreased since the 1980s but it continues to perform research and provide training in a wide variety of disciplines.

Kelsey-Seybold Foundation

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n97078086
  • Corporate body
  • 1951-

Dr. Mavis Kelsey, founder and senior partner of the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, P.A. of Houston, became acquainted with Dr. William Seybold first at UTMB and then more closely when both were working at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Kelsey, Seybold, and Dr. William Leary discussed the idea of establishing a group practice.
Kelsey moved to Houston in 1949 and started a practice at the Hermann Professional Building. Seybold followed in 1950 and Leary in 1951. The Kelsey-Seybold-Leary Clinic first resided on the fourteenth and eighth floors of the Hermann Professional Building.
Other members of the Kelsey-Leary Clinic were Dr. John R. Kelsey, Jr., Dr. Mavis Kelsey's brother, and Dr. Albert O. Owens, psychiatrist from the Menninger Clinic. Dr. Seybold left the group in 1952 but returned in 1961, serving as Chief of the General and Thoracic Surgery Department. The physicians continued to practice together as the Kelsey-Leary-Seybold Clinic up until 1965, when Dr. Leary left to join the M.D. Anderson Hospital Staff. The Clinic was renamed the KelseySeybold Clinic.
Through the years the Clinic has changed its location, expanded its services, established satellite clinics, operated branches through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, headed programs for the armed services and has opened the innovative Fitness Center.
In May of 1979, the partnership was converted to a Professional Association. The Kelsey-Seybold, P.A., also organized by the physician staff of the clinic were the Clinic Drugs, Inc., Kelsey-Seybold Leasehold, Medical Equipment Co., Inc. and Professional Supply Company, Inc.
The Kelsey-Seybold Foundation is a chartered, charitable foundation. The Foundation fosters the advancement of medicine by sponsoring medical research and education, especially cancer research and childcare.
The Kelsey-Seybold Clinic provides a diversity of services ranging from specialized, in depth treatment, comprehensive fitness health maintenance programs and the promotion of scientific research.

Kelsey, Mavis Parrott, 1912-

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80061247
  • Person
  • 1912-2013

Dr. Mavis Parrott Kelsey, founder and senior partner of the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, P.A., was born in Deport, Texas on October 7, 1912. In 1932 he received his Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M College. Inspired by his grandfather, country doctor Dr. Joseph Benson Kelsey, he attended the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, earning his MD in 1936. Dr. Kelsey served a rotating internship at New York City's Bellevue Hospital before returning to UTMB for a year as an Instructor in Pathology. From 1938 to 1939 he served on the Junior staff of Scott and White Clinic in Temple, Texas. On September 17, 1939, Dr. Mavis P. Kelsey married Mary Randolph Wilson. In that same year he accepted a three-year fellowship in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he befriended Dr. William Dempesey Seybold, whom he had first met at UTMB. Dr. Kelsey's stint at the Mayo Clinic was interrupted by his service in the U.S. Army Air Force, Medical Corps from 1941-1945. His assignments a included Certified Flight Surgeon's rating; Surgeon of the 11th Fighter Command in Alaska, 1942-1943; Editor-in-Chief of the Air Surgeon's Bulletin. Dr. Kelsey attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1945. For awhile during the war, the Kelseys were stationed in Dayton, Ohio, where Dr. Kelsey worked at the Aero Medical Research Laboratory, Wright Field Air Force Base.

After the War, Dr. Kelsey completed his training at the Mayo Clinic receiving a Masters of Science in Internal Medicine from the University of Minnesota, Mayo Foundation, in 1947. He was appointed to the Mayo Clinic staff as an Instructor in Medicine. After some deliberation, the Kelseys returned to Houston on January 15, 1949. Dr. Kelsey leased office space in the new Hermann Professional building with the intent to practice internal medicine with an emphasis on endocrinology. Unfortunately, construction was running behind and the office was not ready, so Dr. E.W. Bertner and Dr. George Waldron each offered free office space. Dr. Kelsey divided his time between the two offices until May. In 1950 Dr. Kelsey encouraged Drs. Leary and Seybold to reconsider the prospect of establishing a clinic in Houston, and idea they had discussed while working together at the Mayo Clinic, Leary in chest diseases and Seybold in surgery. Seybold moved to Houston in October of 1950 and Leary in January of 1951 and the three physicians founded the Kelsey-Leary-Seybold Clinic. The Clinic first resided on the fourteenth and eighth floors of the Hermann Professional Building.

In addition to his clinic practice, Dr. Kelsey held many teaching and administrative posts. Among them were: Instructor of Medicine, Mayo Foundation in the University of Minnesota; Acting Dean, the University of Texas Postgraduate School of Medicine; Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of Texas School of Biomedical Sciences; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Kelsey also served on the staff of St. Luke's Hospital (Consulting Staff and Vice Chief of Staff), Methodist Hospital and M.D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research. Dr. Kelsey also acted as Medical Advisor for many corporations including the Pennzoil Corporation, Roy M. Huffington, Inc. and United Energy Resources. Over the years Dr. Kelsey has been an active member in many professional associations and organizations. They include: Alpha Omega Alpha, Alpha Kappa Kappa, Sigma Xi, he was elected to the Philosophical Society of Texas, Fellowship in the American College of Physicians, Aerospace Medical Association, American Thyroid Association, Harris County Medical Association, Texas Medical Association, The Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, Mayo Alumni Association, American and Texas Diabetes & Endocrine Association, American Cancer Society (Board of Directors, Harris County Unit), Yearbook of Cancer (Editorial Consultant), Kelsey-Seybold Foundation member of the Board of Trustees and Grants Committee, Member of the President's Council for Texas A&M Medical College and the Sterling C. Evans Library, First City National BankMedical Center (Board of Directors), Development Board of University of Texas Medical School-Galveston. Dr. Kelsey's participation in civic and social organizations reflect his interest in the fine arts, history and genealogy and nature. He has devoted time and resources to the Houston Country Club, A&M Association of Former Students, Friends of the A&M University Library, University of Texas Health Science Center-Presidents Club, Allegro, UT Alumni Association, Texas Nurseryman's Association, Texas Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, ASIA Society, Friends of Bayou Bend, American Book Collector's Society, Beaumont Art Museum, Harris County Heritage Society, Southwestern Cattleman's Association, and the Houston Committee on Foreign Relations, a charter member of the American Historical Print Society. Dr. Kelsey is a Distinguished Alumnus of Texas A & M and an Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumnus of the U.T. Medical School in Galveston.

Dr. Kelsey and his wife, Mary had a great love for American art and Americana. They donated their collections to several museums and university libraries. The Mavis and Mary Kelsey Collection of Winslow Homer Prints is housed in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Dr. Kelsey wrote the catalog for this Collection, named "Wilson Homer Graphics", which is an authoritative reference work used by Homer scholars nationwide. The United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland received their collection of Naval Prints. The Kelsey Collection of Thomas Nast Illustrations was donated to Pepperdine University. The University of Houston was given a collection of wood engravings on Social Life and War. The Kelseys’ collection of the letters of John Quincy Adams was given to Bryan Mawr College. Dr. and Mrs. Kelsey gave to the Sterling C.-Evans Library of Texas A&M University their Collection of Americana. Several thousand books, art works and prints make up this outstanding collection. He and his wife traveled extensively and studied their respective family histories. They wrote six books of genealogy.

Dr. Kelsey was an active farmer and rancher for many years and participated in a number of other business activities including oil exploration and apartment building. After his retirement he Mary devoted their time in writing genealogy; cataloging and writing about their extensive collection of historical and art prints, painting and rare books, investing and philanthropy. In 1985, Dr. Kelsey retired from the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic after thirty-seven years. He died November 12, 2103.

Cooley, Denton A., 1920-2016

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79078765.html
  • Person
  • 1920-2016

Dr. Denton A. Cooley, the founder of the Texas Heart Institute, attended the University of Texas and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he graduated in 1944. After serving in the Army Medical Corps and studying with Lord Russell Brock in London, he returned to his hometown of Houston, Texas to teach surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in the 1950s. The Texas Heart Institute was founded on August 3, 1962 in order to research and treat cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Among many innovations developed by Cooley and his colleagues at the Institute are the first implantation of an artificial heart, the first successful heart transplant in the United States, advances in treatment of congenital defects, and a number of prostheses and implants. The Institute is part of Texas Medical Center, the largest medical center in the word. CHI St. Luke’s Health – Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center is the Institute’s clinical partner. [Sources: Texas Heart Institute website; The Houston Review, vol. 2, no. 1, p.16-19]

Bertner, Ernst William

  • Person
  • 1889-1950

Dr. Ernst William Bertner was born at Colorado City, Texas, August 18, 1889. After graduating from the local high school and the New Mexico Military Institute at Roswell, New Mexico, he entered the Medical Branch of the University of Texas, Galveston, receiving his MD in 1911.

Following his graduation, he took intern and residency training at the Willard Parker Hospital, Saint Vincent's Hospital and the Manhattan Maternity Hospital, all in New York City. He came to Houston in July, 1913, where he engaged in practice until World War I, when he enlisted in the Medical Corps.

He was assigned to the British Army, and went overseas in July, 1917. In March, 1918, he was transferred to the American Expeditionary Force, and assigned to Headquarters Medical and Surgical Consultants at Newfchateau, France.

Dr. Bertner had a varied and exciting career in France and served actively on most of the front lines. He was wounded by shrapnel and confined to a hospital for a short period of time. He was soon returned to duty. At one time he was caught in one of the famous German pincers movements and was one of the few surviving Medical Officers.

He was discharged from the Army in June, 1919, at Camp Dix, New Jersey with the rank of Major. The following month he resumed his practice in Houston. In May 1921, he went to Baltimore, Maryland, for post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in surgery, gynecology, and urology. He resumed practice in Houston in May 1922, and since that time limited his work to surgery and gynecology.

He was married at St. Louis, November 30, 1922, to Miss Julia Williams, daughter of the late W.E. Williams formerly General Manager of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad in Texas.

Dr. Bertner was always an active member of organized medicine, in the county, state and national organizations and served as seventy-second president of Texas State Medical Association. He served as President of the Harris County Medical Society, President of the Post Graduate Medical Assembly of South Texas, President of the Texas Surgical Society, and President of the Texas Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Central Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He was State Counsellor and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He was a member of the American Medical Association, American Urological Association, American Gynecological Association, Central Association of Gynecologists, and Interurban Gynecological Society.

Dr. Bertner was active in hospital organization, having formerly been Chief of Staff of Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston, and very active in building the first unit of that institution. Later, he became identified with Hermann Hospital and did much towards the development of the institution, where he served as Chief of Staff. He was also on the Surgical Staff of Memorial Hospital and Southern Pacific Hospital in Houston.

He served as Vice-Chairman of the Houston Board of Health and Executive Committeeman of the Texas Social Hygiene Association. He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Houston, a 32nd degree Mason, Knight Templar, Shriner and Knight Commander of the Court of Honor of the Scottish Rite, and a member of the Houston Club, Ramada Club, and Houston Country Club.

Dr. Bertner was one of the founders of the Texas Medical Center and was its first president from 1945-1950. He was named by the University of Texas as acting director of the M.D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research when that institution was conceived. He was responsible for the professional organization and the operation of the hospital for the first four years of its existence. He served as professor and chairman of the department of gynecology for the Baylor College of Medicine since its establishment in Houston from 1943 until his death in 1950.

During World War II he was in command of the Emergency Medical Service of the Office of Civilian Defense, and received a Presidential Citation for this service.

Dr. Bertner was a past Vice-President of the American Cancer Society and served on its Board for several years. He was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Texas Division and received the American Cancer Society award for distinguished service in cancer control in 1949. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Houston Chamber of Commerce. He was a member of the Citizen's Committee for Reorganization of the Executive Branch of the Government, an outgrowth of the Hoover Commission Report.

Dr. Bertner died July 28, 1950 in Houston following a two year battle with cancer. He was survived by his wife, Julia Williams Bertner, two sisters and a niece.

Baylor College of Medicine

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79127036
  • Corporate body
  • 1900-

Baylor College of Medicine is a private medical school located in the Texas Medical Center. It opened in October 1900 in Dallas, Texas, by Albert Ferdinand Beddoe, A.B., M.D., and Samuel Hollingsworth Stout, A.B., M.D., as the University of Dallas Medical Department (there was no such school as the University of Dallas). In 1903 it joined with Baylor University and became the Baylor University College of Medicine. In 1943, the M.D. Anderson Foundation invited the College of Medicine to join the fledgling Texas Medical Center in Houston, so in July of that year it reopened in a former Sears, Roebuck, and Company warehouse. It moved into the current Roy and Lillie Cullen Building in 1947. Michael DeBakey joined as chair of the surgery department in 1948. The College expanded both physically and by reputation through the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1969, the College of Medicine separated from the University and officially changed its name to Baylor College of Medicine. In addition to the medical school, it has a Graduate School of Biomedical Science, the School of Allied Health Professions, and the National School of Tropical Medicine.

Schull, William J.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85802836
  • Person
  • 1922-2017

William J. Schull, PhD was an American scientist and geneticist famous for his research into the effects of ionizing radiation on the human body largely based on the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after World War II. Dr. Schull began his scientific career in radiation research in 1949 when he joined the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), established in Japan in 1946 by the United States National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council to study the effects of the bombings in accordance with a presidential directive from Harry S. Truman. From his first post as Head of the Department of Genetics at ABCC, Dr. Schull served many decades in the elite corps of scientists conducting research into the genetic impact of irradiation on human health. A professor emeritus of The Human Genetics Center, School of Public Health, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Texas, Dr. Schull served on most of the major governmental and non-governmental committees formed throughout the 20th century to quantify the effects of ionizing radiation. He helped form the genetics department at the University of Michigan where he served as a professor from 1956 to 1972. As his career progressed, Dr. Schull frequently served in executive positions, chairing many of the governmental committees he served on and becoming a director, 1986-1987 and 1990-1991, and in 1996-1997, vice chairman and chief of research of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), established in 1975 as the follow-on organization to the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Dr. Schull was inducted into the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2001. In affirmation of his long and honorable service to the Japanese people, Dr. Schull received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class from the Emperor of Japan in 1992.

William Jackson Schull was born on March 17, 1922 to Gertrude Edna (maiden name Davenport) (1900-1938) and Eugene Shull (1896-1975) in Louisiana, Missouri. While Shull is the last name inscribed on his birth certificate, his name was changed to Schull while he was in elementary school. Dr. Schull spent most of his boyhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from that city’s Lincoln High School in 1939. In 1946, Dr. Schull earned a Bachelor of Science in Zoology from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1947, he earned a Master of Science in Zoology from the same university. He received a Doctor Of Philosophy in Genetics From Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio in 1949. Enlisting in December 1942, Dr. Schull served in the United States Army as a surgical technician with the 37th Infantry Division in the South Pacific until December 1945. In concert with his scientific work, Dr. Schull valued the preservation of the archival historic record and promoted the preservation of the history of the ABCC and RERF throughout his career. He died June 20, 2017, in Houston.

A detailed curriculum vitae is available for Dr. Schull in the control folder for his collection at the McGovern Historical Collection.

Sutow, Wataru W. (Wataru Walter), 1912-1981

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80139900
  • Person
  • 1912-1981

Watauru W. Sutow, MD, is known for his work in pediatric oncology and for his pediatric studies with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Sutow was born August 31, 1912 and died December 20, 1981. Sutow was a pioneer in defining and establishing pediatric oncology as a specialty and chemotheraphy as a viable adjunct or alternative to radiotherapy and surgery for the treatment of cancer. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Sutow directed a pediatric research team for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. He later joined the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. As a collaborator with the Brookhaven National Labratory, he conducted extensive research on the effects of radiation fallout on Marshall islanders.

Wataru "Wat" Walter Sutow was born August 31, 1912 in Guadalupe, California in the United States of America to Yasaku and Yoshi Sutow. He father was born in Fukushima, Japan, in 1868 and came to the Unites States in 1905. His mother, also of Fukushima, Japan, was born there in 1878, and migrated to the U.S. in 1911.

Wataru Sutow married Mary H. Korenaga in Guadalupe, California, in early September 1937. Mary was born May 28 1914, in Montrose, California. He attended the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1939-1942. As a result of the U.S. government's policy during World War II calling for imprisonment and revocation of civil rights for people of Japanese descent, Sutow was unable to finish his medical studies for most of the war. His family was forcibly relocated to Salt Lake City. He finally was able to complete his medical degree in 1945 at the age of 33. He earned his MD from the University of Utah College of Medicine.

The Sutows had two daughters while they resided in Salt Lake City, Ollie Ellen on October 3, 1942, and Chiyono Jean on September 14, 1946. Sutow completed his internship at Salt Lake City General Hostpital 1945-1946 and residency in the Departmnet of Pediatrics at the University of Utah 1946-1947. He obtained his license to practice medicine from the State of Utah on July 1, 1946; the State of California on September 24, 1947; and from the State of Texas on December 3, 1945.

Following the decision to use atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II in August of 1945, the United States government decided to study the immediate and long-term effects of ionized radiation on humans. Sutow was invited to help organize the pediatric portion of the studies by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Sutows left Salt Lake City in 1947 and were in Japan by 1948. During Sutow's first stint with the ABCC, he served as civilian head of the Pediatric Department. On January 16, 1950 they had their third and last child, a son named Edmund Keith who was born at Osaka General Hospital.

In 1950, the Sutow family returned to the United States. Sutow became a fellow at Stanford University where he worked with Dr. John Anderson. As a result of the Korean War, which began in June 1950, Sutow began serving in the U.S. Army in 1951 with the rank of Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He received his officer training in San Antonio and was assigned to the Far East Command. In that position, he again worked with the ABCC in 1953-1954 as Director of Pediatric Research doing the same job he earlier had done as a civilan.

Sutow was drawn to the Texas Medical Center through his working relationship with Dr. H. Grant Taylor, a former director of the ABCC. Taylor was the Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Section of Pediatrics of the University of Texas (UT) M.D. Anderson Hospital (MDAH) in 1954. Taylor recruited Sutow who joined MDAH pediatrics in 1954. Sutow served as assistant and associate pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics until 1969 when he became pediatrician and Professor of Pediatrics. He was acting head of the department of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine from 1954-1978. From 1957 on, his association as research collaborator with Brookhaven National Laboratory allowed him to continue and elaborate on his reseawrch on long-term radiation effects including his study of Japanese infants who had experienced in utero exposure to atomic bomb fallout. Aside from the study of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki popultations, he was also involved in the ongoing study of the effects of the exposure of Marshall Islanders to radiation fallout in 1954.

In March 1954, the United States conducted the Castle Bravo shot on the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Bravo shot was the first code name of the first test of a dry fuel hydrogenn bomb detonated in the atomosphere. Due to unexpected weather patterns, the fallout fell on residents of Rongelap and Utirik atolls in the Marshall Islands. Source: Castle Bravo (April 29, 2015); Wikipedia; retrieved April 30, 2015 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo.

While at MDAH, Sutow organized inter-institutional groups, such as the Southwest Cancer Chemotheraphy Study Group for which he chaired the Pediatric Division 1957-1969. He chaired the Childhood Solid Tumor Committee from 1969-1976. He was a member of the Pediatric Executive Committee of hte Southwest Oncology Group from 1972-1979. He was a member of hte National Wilms' Tumor Study Committee from 1967 and a member of the Executive Committee, Section of Oncology and Hematology, American Academy of Pediatrics, 1975-1978.

When Sutow joined the MDAH Pediatric Section, it consisted of four beds. In Sutow's obituary, which ran in the December 22, 1981 edition of the Houston Post, Dr. Charles A. LeMaistre, president of the UT System Cancer Center, praised Sutow for innovations in treating cancer. "Popular opinion at that time (1954) was skeptical of hte value of drugs in treating cancer, but ... Sutow's regimens for treatment of osteosarcoma (bone cancer) produced some of the most dramatic results ever achieved in pediatric oncology." LeMaistre said. Dr. Jan van Eys stated in the May-June 1982 edition of "The Cancer Bulletin" that Sutow's legacy was that "pediatric oncology addresses the child with cancer, not the cancer in the child ... [Sutow's] ultimate aim was the cured childen, not the cure ... he gave them complete life, not permanent dependency."

In addition to his research and medical practice, Sutow served as an editor or sat on editorial boards for numerous cancer-related publications. He published more than 250 journal articles, contributed to cancer and pediatric textbooks, and published a cancer reference bibliography, a textbook and a book on malignant solid tumor of children.

He was member and a fellow of numerous medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Medical Association and numerous other organizations.

In his personal life, he was an avid conchologist, which is the study of mollusc shells, and a devoted student of philately, which is the study of stamps and postal history.

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Center on Aging

  • Corporate body
  • 1987-

The Center on Aging was established in 1987 as an interdisciplinary center focused on improving the quality of life for an older population through research, patient care, education, institutional development, and community service. The Center engages in research on health-related quality of life, stroke survivors and their caregivers, prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers, and many other aging-related topics. Its outreach program serves over 300 assisted living and nursing facilities in Harris County.

Nixon, Sam

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n83185364
  • Person
  • 1927-2003

SAM A. NIXON, M.D., 76, of Nixon died August 17, 2003 in a Victoria hospital. Dr. Nixon was born in Galveston on June 28, 1927, the son of the late Sam A. Nixon, Sr., and Margaret Sandel Nixon. Sam received his Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A & M (1946) (Class of 1947) and his medical degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (1950), receiving the Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumni Award from UTMB in 1982. After completing a rotating internship at Fordham Hospital, New York City, he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from December 9, 1950 to June 30, 1954, as 11th Field Artillery Battalion Surgeon in Korea and 24th Division Artillery Surgeon in Japan and Korea. He spent twenty-three years as a family physician in rural south Texas (Nixon and Floresville) before moving to Houston at the behest of Truman Blocker, M.D., in 1977 to join The University of Texas Medical School at Houston as Professor in the Department of Family Practice and Community Medicine. A Diplomate of the American Board of Family Practice, he was Director of the Division of Continuing Education and Special Assistant to the President for Community and Professional Relations of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (1977-1992) and Assistant Dean for Continuing Education at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston (1985-1992). After retiring from UTHSCH, he was Associate Medical Director, South Texas Region, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, Inc. (September 1992 - July 1994). He has been active in the Gonzales County Medical Society, the Harris County Medical Society, Texas Medical Association, and the American Medical Association, serving in the AMA House of Delegates for twenty-five years (1969-1994). He was past president of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians (1968) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (1980). He was Chair of the Texas State Rural Medical Education Board (1975-2002). Dr. Nixon was named in December 1985 as a member of the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) and was Chair of the Board (1988-1992). On May 20, 1995, he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Military Medicine by USUHS. He served as president of the Houston Academy of Medicine (1986) and the Harris County Medical Society (1989). Elected Vice-Speaker of the Texas Medical Association House of Delegates (May 1987), Speaker (May 1989) and President-Elect (May 1990), he was President of the TMA in 1991. The TMA, on May 6, 1999, presented Dr. Nixon with its highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award. Texas A & M University and its Association of Former Students honored Dr. Nixon with the Distinguished Alumnus Award on May 1, 1990. In July of 2002, the Texas Academy of Family Physicians presented him the the first Lifetime Achievement Award for service to the specialty of family medicine. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Hughes Nixon, of Nixon; four daughters, Alice Nixon of Bayside, Betsy Carrell and husband Mike of Corpus Christi, Jano Nixon of Houston, Dorothy Robinson and husband Rob of San Leon; two sisters, Margaret Arenas of Houston, Judith Greentree of New York, NY.; six grandchildren, Mark Carrell and Mason Carrell of Corpus Christi, Kleberg Nixon of Houston, Caroline Robinson, Kate Robinson, and Emilie Robinson of San Leon; and numerous nieces and nephews.

McGovern, John P.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50007810
  • Person
  • 1921 - 2007

The John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center is named after a great patron of medicine and the humanities. John P. McGovern, MD (1921-2007) was recognized internationally as an American physician, researcher, historian, author, philosopher, humanitarian and philanthropist. He was the author or coauthor of twenty-two books and 247 publications, and served as the editor or member of editorial boards of more than twenty scientific journals.

Dr. McGovern was the recipient of numerous awards and the holder of seventeen professorships. The American Medical Association presented him with the Special Award for Meritorious Service and said he was truly a giant in American Medicine.

Dr. McGovern’s long-standing commitment to education, in the form of teaching, research and scholarship, led to his appointment to seventeen professorships at fifteen universities. In 1976, he was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Duke University where he received both his Bachelor of Science and medical degrees. The American School Health Association awarded him the Distinguished Alumnus Award, as well as their highest honor, the William A. Howe Award. He was a Presidential appointee to the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, which he chaired in 1973-74. In 1990, the American Association of Colleges of Nurses awarded him the annual Outstanding Scholarship in Health Care Award and in 1991, he received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni of Greater Houston. In all, he was awarded honorary degrees from twenty-eight major colleges and universities. In addition, Dr. McGovern was the author or co-author of over 240 publications, including twenty-one books and served as editor, associate editor, or member of the editorial board of more than twenty scientific journals. His leadership was exemplified as chief elected officer or president of at least fifteen prominent societies in the humanities, health education science and medicine.

Service was always important to Dr. McGovern. In 1985, he received the Private Sector Initiative Commendation from U.S. President Ronald Reagan for his lifetime of meritorious service in medicine and generous contributions to his community. He was appointed to a four-year term in 1987 on the National Advisory Council of the Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Health. The following year brought the American Medical Writer’s Association’s highest honor, the Harold Swanberg Distinguished Service Award and the American Medical Association’s Board of Directors’ Special Award for Meritorious Service, the latter calling Dr. McGovern truly one of the giants in American Medicine. In 1989, then-Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop awarded him the Surgeon General’s Medal for his lifetime of meritorious and multi-faceted contributions to the broad field of health promotion and disease prevention and specifically, more recently for his seminal work on our Drunk Driving Initiative.

For over twenty years, Dr. McGovern served as the honorary curator of rare books for The Texas Medical Center Library. He donated his extensive rare book collection to the Library’s History of Medicine Section of Special Collections in 1982. In 1996, the Library’s Special Collection was renamed in his honor, The John P. McGovern Historical Collections & Research Center.

Marcus, Marianne T.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2017037881
  • Person
  • 1932-2022

Marianne Taft Marcus, Ed.D., R.N., F.A.A.N of the University of Texas at Houston School of Nursing served as the John P. McGovern Distinguished Professor of Addiction Nursing and Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Education and Research. In these roles she explored mindfulness and meditation as methods of reducing stress for individuals in recovery and brought together people from diverse backgrounds to support prevention at the community-level. During her time at UT she also served as Chair of the Department of Nursing Systems and Director of the Master of Nursing Education Track, among other roles.

Following her studies at Columbia University, Dr. Marcus worked as a nurse at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital. After taking time to raise her children, she began teaching nursing and added two more graduate degrees from Columbia. In 1980 she returned to Houston, enrolling in the Education doctoral program at the University of Houston and beginning her longstanding affiliation with the UT Health Science Center.

Dr. Marcus received numerous recognitions throughout her career. Just some examples: in 1994 she was elected to a Fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing; in 1998 she was awarded the John P. McGovern Award for Excellence in Medical Education presented by the Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction (AMERSA); and in 2006 she was elected to the University of Texas Academy of Health Science Education.

Dr. Marcus was born October 25, 1932 at Hermann Hospital in Houston. Her mother had been a nurse at Hermann, and her grandfather Gordon Avery Taft was on the Hermann Estate Board while the hospital was being built. Marianne Marcus died on January 16, 2022.

Clark, Nancy Vecera

  • Person

Nancy Vecera Clark worked in the Development Office of Hermann Hospital Estate from 1979 to 1986. In 1981 her title was Research Specialist, Development and Marketing; by 1982 her title was Development Coordinator. Her involvement included donor relations, fundraising, and historical research. During her time at Hermann, Charles R. Stricklin was Director of Development. Nancy would go on to serve as Director of Development at the University of Houston.

John P. McGovern Historical Collections & Research Center

  • https://lccn.loc.gov/n2004120720
  • Corporate body
  • 1977-

The McGovern Historical Center (MHC) is the historical and special collections department for The TMC Library. The MHC maintains rare book and archival collections. Artificial collections have been created to provide access to materials without clear provenance in order to increase discoverability.

The earliest acquisition records for the books in the MHC are found in the Houston Academy of Medicine’s (HAM) Library Committee reports for 1935 and 1936. Thirty Fellows of the Academy raised $300 to purchase a collection of 275 French medical books published between 1730 and 1830. In 1949, HAM and Baylor College of Medicine combined their medical libraries. In anticipation of the completion of the Jesse H. Jones Building for the library, the MD Anderson Foundation purchased the rheumatology collection of a New York physician, Dr. Reginald Burbank. This purchase was followed by a gift from the Cora and Webb Mading Foundation of more than 1,000 titles on sanitation and communicable diseases. After the 1954 dedication of the library building, many physicians donated books or historical pamphlets to be stored in a very small, locked room on the second floor. Soon after his arrival in Houston, Dr. McGovern became one of the Library’s most staunch supporters, annually supplying funds for the purchase of rare books and travel support for the librarians to attend meetings of the American Association for the History of Medicine. In 1977, The Library formed a new department with new quarters to collect historical materials and to enhance the rare book collections. In 1982, Dr. McGovern donated his personal collection of rare and historical books to the Library. In 1996 the Library’s Board of Directors named the historical department in his honor.

University of Houston College of Pharmacy

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2020048313
  • Corporate body
  • 1947-

The University of Houston School of Pharmacy opened in 1947 in the science building of the University of Houston, with physician and pharmacist Allan Collette as acting dean. It became accredited by the American Council of Pharmaceutical Education in 1950. It moved to the Lamar Fleming Building in 1963 and then into a new building in the Texas Medical Center in 1981. Ph.D. programs in pharmacology and pharmaceutics were established in 1987. Between 1977 and ???? the School worked with Baylor College of Medicine and UT Medical School to operate the Houston Pharmacological Center to provide drug information to medical professionals.

Veteran's Administration Hospital (Houston, Tex.)

  • Corporate body
  • 1946-

The Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center is operated by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and is located in the Texas Medical Center. It serves Harris and 27 surrounding counties and is one of the Department’s biggest hospitals. Baylor College of Medicine has been a partner since 1949 but the VA is also staffed by the UT Health Science Center at Houston and by students and residents from the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy.
The VA campus began as a U.S. Navy hospital in 1946; when it was completed it had 39 buildings, 943 beds, and was one of the biggest and most modern hospitals in the Southern United States. During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt declared that certain military hospitals, including the Navy hospital in Houston, would be transferred to Veterans Affairs after the war. After some delay, the hospital officially became the Houston Veterans Affairs Hospital in April 1949. Paul Manguson, MD, was appointed director in 1948. He found the hospital understaffed and was responsible for establishing the partnership with what was at the time the Baylor University College of Medicine. Around this time, Michael DeBakey, who served in the US Army Medical Corps, realized that the medical data accrued from such a large pool of patients during the war could be invaluable research material and proposed “a follow-up system to determine the natural and post-treatment history of such diseases and conditions as might be selected for study”.
In 1952, a former barracks was converted into a radioisotope laboratory for the study of cancer. Building 203 eventually housed eight laboratories, two culture rooms, a constant temperature instrument room, a preparation room, sterilization room, and cold room. There were also facilities for work on animals, and glassblowing, sheet metal, electronic, and machine shops for maintaining and fabricating laboratory equipment and experimental devices. Dr. DeBakey was working in Building 203 when he started his early vascular surgery studies and experiments with Dacron grafts. The first surgery using a Dacron graft was performed at the Houston VA on September 2, 1954.
The VA was designated a medical center in 1978 to reflect the broad range of treatments it offered. IT officially joined the TMC as its 33rd member institution in 1985. Efforts to modernize the growing hodgepodge of buildings on the 118-acre campus proved impractical so the decision was made to replace them; the current building was completed in 1992.

Hench, Philip Showalter

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2006184682
  • Person
  • 1896-1965

Dr. Philip Showalter Hench was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania February 28, 1896. He died on vacation in Jamaica, March 30, 1965.

He graduated from Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, at the age of 20 and entered the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He completed his medical studies in 1920 and in 1921 became a fellow at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine of the University of Minnesota. He was appointed faculty member at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, in 1925. In 1926 he was appointed head of the new section on rheumatic diseases. In 1928 he studied in Frieburg, Germany under the pathologist Professor Aschoff and in Munich under Professor von Muller. In 1953 he became a senior consultant of the Mayo Clinic. He retired from the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in 1957.

In the 1930s he was instrumental in strengthening the diagnosis standards of rheumatic diseases. He wrote several important papers on various aspects of rheumatology which gained his the respect of his profession. He encouraged others to join him in compliling the Annual Rheumatism Reviews, for which he served as the chief editor from 1932 to 1948. Dr. Hench was a founder of and active in the Arthritis and Rheumatism Association during his whole career and served as its president in 1939. Dr. Hench was chairman of the Ligue Internationale contre le Rheumatisme and of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Study Section of the National Institutes of Health. In 1962 he was appointed a member of the Commission on Drug Safety for advancement of the predictability of the action of new pharmaceuticals in humans.

During World War II he served in the United States Army Medical Corps at Hot Springs, Arkansas and at Camp Carson, Colorado when he directed the United States Army Rheumatism Center. He was promoted to rank of colonel in 1945.

When he returned to the Mayo Clinic after the war, he began to mention in his speeches the possible existence of an anti-rheumatic substance based on observations that some conditions, such as pregancy, jaundice or fever, seemed to afford patients remission of the pain and other symptoms of rheumatic diseases. During the 1940s, Dr. Edward C. Kendall, Hench's colleague at Mayo Clinic, succeeded in extracting a compound from the adrenal cortex. With some of the Clinic patients' willingness, in 1948, Hench and his research colleagues decided to try the compound on the patients to determine its effect on their rheumatoid arthritis.

The dramatic results of freedom from pain, lessened swelling and increased movement obtained by the patients were instantaneous news. In 1949 Dr. Hench reported to the American College of Physicians and to the seventh meeting of the International League against Rheumatism the results of the trials of cortisone and Adrenocorticotropic Hormone (ACTH)in cases of rheumatoid arthritis and rheumatic fever. Although the results were hailed by the general public as a complete cure for rheumatoid arthritis, Dr. Hench insisted that the Mayo team had at that time conducted only preliminary trials. However this was a major breakthrough in the treatment and research of rheumatic diseases.

In 1950, Dr. Hench was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine jointly with biochemists Dr. Edward C. Kendall and Professor Tadeus Reichstein of Basle. He won many other awards for his research work, including the Lasker Award of the American Public Health Association, the Heberden Award from the Heberden Society in Great Britain, the Criss Award from the American Rheumatology Association,an award from the Argentine Society of Rheumatology, an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the National University of Ireland, and the Modern Medicine Award.

Dr. Hench was a member or honorary member of many national and international institutions and organizations. Among the many were the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the RoyalSociety of Medicine, London; the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium; the Association of American Physicians; Association of Military Surgeons of the United States.

Dr. Hench married Mary Genevieve Kahler in 1927. They had four children: Mary Showalter Henty, Dr. Philip Kahler Hench, Susan Kahler Bowis, John Bixler Hench. Mrs. Hench's father had worked with the Mayo Clinic to provide the use of the Kahler Corporations group of hospitals, hotels and supporting institutions for Mayo staff and patients. Dr. Hench served on the Board of Directors of the Kahler Corporation.

His hobbies were tennis, music, photography and the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He published several articles on medicial history, most notably on the conquest of yellow fever.

Biographical information from: "Philip Showalter Hench, M.D." by James Eckman. The Journal-Lancet, Vol. 85, No.5, May 1965, p. 218-220; "Obituary Notices: P. S. Hench, M.D.", British Medical Journal, April 10, 1965, p. 1003; "Dr. Philip Hench, Nobel Laureate, Dies" Mayovox, Vol. 16, No. 12, April 9, 1965, p.1.

MacKie and Kamrath

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2009044810
  • Corporate body
  • 1937-

Lensky, Paul

  • Person
  • 1923-1990

Dr. Paul Lenksy was a pediatrician practicing in Houston, Texas.

Lensky was born in Galveston on November 16, 1923. He attended the University of Texas in Austin and graduated from the University’s medical school in Galveston in March 1946.

Following graduation, he interned at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York. In 1947-1948 he was a staff physician in pediatrics at Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston. The photographs in MS 236 Paul Lensky, MD Photograph Collection date from that time.

His next move was a one-year residency at Louisville General Hospital. He returned to Houston in July 1949 and took up a residency in pediatrics at Hermann Hospital. He was later on the staff at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Lensky married Eleanor Ruth Waldman on April 12, 1959 at Temple Emanu El in Houston. The couple had a son, Mark, born May 13, 1960.

Dr. Lensky was a veteran of the US Army Medical Corp., a member of Harris County Medical Society, the Texas Pediatrics Society, and the Houston Pediatrics Society. He was a member of Congregation Beth Israel and Congregation Emanu El, as well as the Westwood Country Club, and served as Secretary of B’Nai B’Rith in Houston.

Dr. Lensky died May 23, 1990.

Maurer, Joseph I.

  • Person

Joseph I. Maurer was born in Galveston, Texas. Growing up he assisted his father, Joseph M. Maurer, who worked as a photographer in Galveston. The younger Maurer then served as a photographic technician with the US Navy during World War II. Upon his return to Texas, he worked for Southwest Camera and began assembling equipment to open his own studio. He opened his commercial photography studio in 1946, and it operated until 1978. Much of Maurer's work involved photographing portraits, weddings, graduations, and other events. He served as President of the Houston Professional Photographers Guild in 1966.

In the 1950s Maurer photographed portraits of Houston physicians. These portraits were used in the Harris County Medical Society Pictorial Directory.

Source: Houston Public Library, HMRC, Joseph Maurer Photographs

Merrill, Joseph

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n77015012
  • Person
  • 1923-2021

Joseph Melton Merrill was born December 8, 1923 in Andalusia, Alabama. He attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa for 15 months before qualifying for medical school. He enlisted in the infantry reserves in 1942 and because special consideration was given to medical students, was sent back to Tuscaloosa to start medical school in September 1944. He was in the Air Force in the early 1950s. Dr. Merrill died in Houston on June 27, 2021.

Baun, Mara M.

  • Person
  • 1942-

Dr. Mara Madeleine Baun was born March 5, 1942, and has lived in Missouri City since 1973.

Bangs, Tina E.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80109545
  • Person
  • 1913-1999

Tina Engdahl Bangs was born December 31, 1915 in Spokane, Washington and died in Houston on September 21, 1999. John Leslie “Jack” Bangs was born September 3, 1913 in Minot, North Dakota and died May 2, 1971. Jack served in the Navy during World War II; they are both buried in the Houston National Cemetery. They were recruited to Houston in 1951 to open a speech and hearing clinic in space donated by Methodist Hospital. The new building for the Houston Speech and Hearing Center Clinical Services opened in 1959 and was tripled in size in 1969 by the addition of a research building.

Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2006019371
  • Corporate body

The Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education (SACME) was established April 2, 1976 as the Society of Medical College Directors of Continuing Medical Education (SMCDCME). On July 20, 1998, SMCDCME was re-named to its current title. Note: This Chronology was taken from the SACME website, History page www.sacme.org.

1976 Society established on April 2.

1981 First issue of Mobius published (Lucy Ann Geiselman, editor); Research Committee formed (Harold Paul, chair).

1984 Support of the Research and Development Resource Base in CME (Continuing Medical Education) by the Society (Dave Davis); RICME (Research in Continuing Medical Education) I (David Gullion, Lucy Ann Geiselman, chairs); Training of Society interviewers for "the change study."

1985 Change study interviews total 200.

1986-1988 Search for Society logo.

1986 RICME II (Dave Davis, chair).

1987 First issue of INTERCOM published in January (Harold Paul, Dene Murray, editors); Joint plenary session CME/SMCDCME; highlights of the change study.

1988 RICME III (John Parboosingh, Jocelyn Lockyer, chairs); First Congress on CME (Phil R. Manning, Chair); First honorary member of the Society (Cyril Houle); Title change from Mobius to JCEHP (The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions) with v. 8 (1); Development of first membership brochure (Harold Paul, Dene Murray and others).

1989 Change study published (Robert Fox, Paul Mazmanian, R.Wayne Putnam, editors); Changing and Learning in the Lives of Physicians; Strategic plan for the Society (George Smith); Membership in the Council of Academic Societies (James Leist, Dale Dauphinee).

1990 First meeting of the "Armadillo Society" (past presidents); RICME IV (Nancy Bennett, chair).

1991 Tri-Group leadership formalized by Alliance for Continuing Medical Education (ACME), Association for Hospital Medical Education (AHME) and SMCDCME; Foundation for research established (James Leist); First Distinguished Service Award (Malcolm Watts).

1992 JCEHP reorganized (James Leist); Third Congress on CME (George Smith, chair); SMCDCME incorporated (George Smith and Robert Kristofco); New JCEHP editor appointed (William Felch); Society home established at AAMC (Brownell Anderson); Position paper presented: The Role of Continuing Medical Education in Academic Health Centers (William Easterling).

1993 Distinguished Service Award (Phil Manning); Research Award (Dave Davis); CME Glossary (Joe D'Angelo); Society listserv established (Robert Bollinger); First Society brochure competition (Susan Duncan); New member orientation established at Spring Meeting (Deborah Holmes).

1994 Distinguished Service Award (Julian S. Reinschmidt); Research Award (Robert Fox); Research Endowment Council established (Brian O'Toole); Task force white paper, The connection between continuing medical education and health care reform (George Smith, Gloria Allington).

1995 Request from AAMC for statement on CME; Reorganization of AAMC's Group on Educational Affairs (GEA), continuing education one of four sections; Pew-Glaxo Working Group on the Future of Academic CME Research Award established (Jocelyn Lockyer, recipient); Distinguished Service Award (Martin Shickman); Report of Society working group on Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) essentials and standards, Future directions for medical college continuing medical education (Arnie Bigbee, chair); Request from ACCME for SACME accreditation surveyors.

1996 Four Society task forces and focus groups address the task force report; Society invited to participate in restructuring of the ACCME.

1997 SMCDCME listserv established by Bob Bollinger.

1998 July 20, SMCDCME re-named the Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education (SACME).

1999 SACME Web site created by Bob Bollinger.

Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society of North America

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82058247
  • Corporate body
  • 1938-

Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Honor Society is a medical honor society, founded in 1886 at Cornell University. Membership is by invitation based on achievements and potential. Sigma Xi supports research grants and other programs in medical and science education. The Rice University/Texas Medical Center chapter was founded in 1938. It was evidently inactive for a few years in the late 1950s and early 1960s until an effort was made in 1962 to revitalize it; the materials in this collection date from around that time forward.

Women's Fund for Health, Education, and Research

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2005046538
  • Corporate body
  • 1979-

The Women’s Fund was founded in 1979 by Jacqueline and Wayne Goettsche to support research in women’s health and promote education to women and girls in underserved populations. In addition to hosting fundraising events, the Fund supplies research grants and publishes A Primer On Women’s Health, which is circulated free of charge in both English and Spanish.
University of Houston Library archives collection 2000-002 has Women’s Fund materials 1979-1997.

St. Joseph Hospital (Houston, Tex.)

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85276261
  • Corporate body
  • 1887-

St. Joseph’s Infirmary was established in 1887 by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word and was originally housed in a frame building at the corner of Caroline and Franklin Streets. A year later, the hospital entered into an agreement with the Harris County Commissioners’ Court to care for Houston’s indigent patients. It became noted for the care it provided during the 1891 smallpox outbreak. A brick building designed by Nicholas J. Clayton was constructed in 1894 but burned soon after, killing two Sisters, when a fire started in a nearby warehouse. Donations by city residents funded a second new building at Crawford and Pierce; the site is now occupied by the Plastic Surgery Institute. A three-story brick building was completed in 1905 and by 1919, when the Bishop Byrne Annex opened (is this the one on the bus route?) the hospital had 350 beds and a wide range of medical and surgical capabilities. Like many hospitals at the time, it had its own nursing school. The maternity hospital was constructed in 1938 with donations from the George Strake family and still stands at (check address). A new hospital wing and convent building were added in 1940. The emergency department treated over 50 victims of 1947 Texas City Disaster. It was the largest hospital complex in the city until the establishment of the Texas Medical Center at the end of the 1940s. Before Texas Children’s Hospital opened in the TMC in 1954, St. Joseph’s pediatric department maintained an affiliation with Baylor College of Medicine. In 2012, a branch was opened on the site of the former Heights Hospital at 1917 Ashland.
Dr. Mavis Kelsey of the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic was on staff in the 1950s. In 1960s plastic surgeon Dr. Thomas Cronin and resident Frank Gerow, working with Dow Corning, developed silicone gel breast implants. The Bloxsom air lock device for resuscitating newborns was developed by pediatrician Allan Bloxsom in 1950, though it fell out of favor by the end of the decade. Herman Barnett, the first African-American graduate of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and the first African-American appointee to the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners, finished his anesthesiology residency at St. Joseph’s in 1968 and then joined the medical staff.

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. School of Allied Health Sciences

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85248720
  • Corporate body
  • 1973 -

The UTHealth School of Biomedical Informatics began in 1973 as the University of Texas School of Allied Health Sciences. It provided certificate programs in technical arenas to post-bachelor’s students. Disciplines included biomedical communications (audiovisual production in the context of the health sciences); nutrition and dietetics; blood bank technology; histotechnology (preparation of tissue sample slides for examination by pathologists); medical technology to perform laboratory work; nurse anesthesia; perfusion; and cytotechnology (preparing and assisting in the examination of cell slides, as for Pap smears). In 1997 it was reformatted to focus on health informatics, the collection, processing, storage, analysis, interpretation, and retrieval of medical statistics and information.

City of Houston Department of Public Health and Planning

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50029268
  • Corporate body

Houston Health Department Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Research for Effectiveness (OPERE) (2006), “comprises epidemiologists, statisticians, and GIS analysts who collaborate with . . . partners within and outside the department for research, analysis, interpretation, and sharing of information on health issues that affect our communities”. The Houston Health Department operates several community health centers and provides information on assistance with various health needs, including PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) for those at elevated risk of contracting HIV, or PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis) for those who may recently have been exposed).

Houston-Galveston Area Council

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80006171
  • Corporate body
  • 1966-

Founded in 1966 and funded by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the H-GAC is the regional planning and oversight organization through which local governments consider issues and cooperate in solving area-wide problems. H-GAC serves thirteen counties in the Houston-Galveston area. The greater HGAC includes departments of community and environmental planning (conservation, historic map collection), data services (geographic, information technology, web development, regional 911); finance and budget; human services (independent living for seniors; job placement; and aid for low-income persons); public services; and transportation.
The Health Systems Agency specifically seeks to promote the development of health systems in the region by determining need, developing an implementation plan, reviewing data, and reviewing applications for assistance. Among their missions “is to facilitate the procurement of goods and services in an open, fair, transparent, and economically competitive environment”.

Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (Houston, Tex.)

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85028550
  • Corporate body
  • 1951-

The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research was opened by William Spencer, MD, as the Southwestern Poliomyelitis Respiratory Center in 1951 at the peak of the US polio epidemic. It officially became The Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research in 1959, then just The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research in 1978. After the development of a vaccine in the early 1960s, Dr. Spencer shifted the practice to the rehabilitation of the catastrophically injured. As it expanded, the Institute recruited doctors who would become major contributors in specific areas of concern, such as Gunyon Harrison (pediatric cystic fibrosis), Carlos Vallbona (physiology and cardiology), Paul Harrington (orthopedic surgeon and developer of Harrington rods); and Bobby Alford (ENT). TIRR is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and the McGovern Medical School, and joined Memorial Hermann in 2006.

Karff, Samuel

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79063928
  • Person
  • 1931-2020

Samuel Egal Karff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 19, 1931. He graduated from Harvard University. He served as rabbi for Houston's Beth Israel congregation from 1974 to 1999. After his retirement from Beth Israel, he founded the Texas Medical Center's Health and Human Spirit Program, the forerunner of the McGovern Medical School's Center for Humanities and Ethics. He also lectured for Rice University's Department of Religion for twenty-two years. He was a longtime advocate for civil rights, social justice, and equality, and is honored at Interfaith Ministries for Great Houston's Brigitte and Bashar Kalai's Plaza of Respect, alongside Reverend William Lawson and Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza. Karff died on August 14, 2020.

SoRelle, Danielle Ruth Doyle

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2015186721
  • Person
  • 1948-

Ruth SoRelle was born in Port Arthur on October 9, 1948. She earned a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Texas as Austin and a Master’s from the UT School of Public Health in Houston. Her writing on science and medicine earned her more than 60 awards. She worked at the Houston Chronicle, where she covered the AIDS/HIV epidemic in Houston, for twenty years. She also worked at Baylor College of Medicine where her last position before retirement was as chief science editor in the Office of Vice President of Public Affairs. She retired December 31, 2015, although she continues to write.

Bergstrom, Nancy

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n95034328
  • Person

Aday, Lu Ann

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79107852
  • Person
  • 1946-

Lu Ann Aday was born in Waxahachie, Texas, on August 19, 1946. She earned her bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics in 1968 from Texas Tech University and then went to Purdue University for a Master’s in 1970 and then, in 1973, a doctorate in sociology. She was the associate director of the Center for Health Administration Studies at the University of Chicago before teaching at the University of Texas School of Public Health.

Hayes, Teresa

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2014189446
  • Person
  • 1953-

Teresa Gray Hayes, MD, Ph.D. is an oncologist and an associate professor in hematology and oncology at Baylor College of Medicine. She earned both a Ph.D. and an MD from New York University School of Medicine, in 1981 and 1982, respectively

Mooney, Curtis C.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2010004092
  • Person
  • 1947-0000

Vallbona, Carlos

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n81102713
  • Person
  • 1927-2015

Carlos Vallbona-Calbo’ was born in Granollers, Barcelona, Spain, on July 29, 1927. His father was abducted by a revolutionary security patrol in 1937 and never returned. Vallbona earned a medical degree in Barcelona in 1950 and did post-graduate work in Paris. He and his wife arrived in the US in the 1953, during the polio epidemic.
Vallbona began his career in the US at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky but moved to Houston in 1955 to work for Baylor College of Medicine and for the Southwestern Poliomyelitis Respiratory Center, now The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR). He stayed at Baylor for over 50 years. He did extensive work on post-polio syndrome and the use of magnets to relieve pain. He also worked with the Harris County Hospital District (Harris Health) to assist underserved communities. Dr. Vallbona died August 5, 2015, in Houston.

Ross, Griff T.

  • Person
  • 1920-1985

Griff Terry Ross was born 17, 1920 at Mount Enterprise, Rusk County Texas. Ross graduated from Stephen F. Austin State Teachers’ College in 1939, attended graduated school at the University of Texas at Austin briefly, then graduated from UTMB in 1945. He began his career as a “country doctor”. Ross spent 1955 to 1957 in the Air Force and then earned a Ph.D. from the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. He began working for the National Institute of Health in 1960 as a medical officer and senior investigator and stayed twenty-one years before returning to Texas to take a position at the University of Texas Medical School. His specialty was endocrinology. He died of cancer in Houston on July 1, 1985.
For the record, his father was Griff [no middle name] Ross, MD (29 December 1880 - 15 December 1948) and his son is Griff Terry Ross, Jr., (28 December 1968 - ), not a doctor.

Kraft, Irvin A.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85387373
  • Person
  • 1921-2010

Irvin Alan Kraft was born in Huntington, West Virginia, on November 20, 1921. He attended from Johns Hopkins University but interrupted his education to join the army. He qualified for the Army Specialized Training Program and volunteered to become a doctor, which meant completing two years of pre-medical courses in nine months. His unit studied at NYU School of Medicine and he completed his residency in psychiatry at Kingsbridge VA Hospital in New York City. After a second tour of duty in the Air Force, he received a fellowship in child psychiatry at Tulane University in 1954. He moved to Houston in 1957 to initiate a child psychiatry program at Baylor College of Medicine. He later joined the UT School of Public Health as a clinical professor of mental health.
Kraft was instrumental in founding the Texas Institute of Child Psychiatry in 1963. He worked with Denton Cooley in 1968 as a psychiatric consultant to the heart transplant team. He died May 30, 2010, and is buried at Emanu El Memorial Park.

Barkley, James E.

  • Person
  • 1925-2014

James Earl Barkley, Jr., was born January 21, 1925, in Uhrichsville, Ohio. He served in Europe and Asia during World War II and was assigned for awhile to the pharmacy at Camp Cooke in Los Angeles, California. He obtained a pharmacy degree from Ohio State University in 1951 and began working for Burroughs Wellcome. He was transferred to Houston in 1961. Barkley spent five years in Washington, DC, between 1962 and 1967, but then returned to Houston. He died on March 20, 2014 and is buried at Forest Park Westheimer Cemetery.
Henry Solomon Wellcome was born August 21, 1853, in a log cabin near what would later become Almond, Wisconsin. He and Silas Mainville Burroughs formed Burroughs, Wellcome, & Co. in 1880. In 1884, they introduced to England the idea of selling medications in tablet form instead of the usual powders or liquids. They also pioneered direct marketing to doctors. Burroughs died in 1895 but the company did well under Wellcome’s direction. Wellcome became a British subject in 1910. Wellcome’s enterprises had been consolidated into the Wellcome Foundation, Ltd., in 1924 and, upon his death on July 25, 1936, this formed the foundation for the Wellcome Trust, which remains one of the world’s largest private biomedical charities.

Smythe, Cheves M.

  • http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n89664729
  • Person
  • 1924-2020

Cheves McCord Smythe was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1924. He was born into a well-established South Carolina family. Smythe received his undergraduate degree from Yale College in 1943, and his medical degree in 1947 from Harvard Medical School. He completed his internship and residency at the Boston City Hospital. Next, he served as a Research Fellow at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. Following this, he returned to the Boston City Hospital as a Chief Resident. From 1942-1966, Smythe served in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was a part of the Medical Corps and became a Lieutenant Commander. He retired from the Naval Reserve in 1966. Beginning in 1955, Smythe started as an Instructor in Medicine at the Medical College of South Carolina. He eventually becoming an Assistant Professor of Medicine and finally Dean. He remained as Dean from 1963 until his departure in 1966. The following four years he served as Assistant Director and Director of the Department of Academic Affairs at the Association of American Medical Colleges. The bulk of his career was spent at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, where he became the first dean of the school in 1970. He would remain as dean until 1975. Smythe continued his profession at the university until 1995, serving as Professor, Adjunct Professor, and Dean Pro Tem. Smythe continued his career abroad when he became the Dean at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. He served in this role from 1982 to 1985. His involvement with the school continued, and he returned as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine from 1990 to 1991. Smythe had many hospital appointments including the Hermann Hospital, Memorial Southwest Hospital, and the LBJ Hospital. He was also a member of many medical organizations and received many honors and awards. In addition, he was the author of numerous publications. For a complete list of accomplishments please visit Smythe’s vitae and bibliography.

Dr. Smythe died May 11, 2020, in Charleston, South Carolina.

Results 1 to 100 of 233