Joyce Elizabeth Elder Yost, while a doctoral student at University of Texas Health Science Center - School of Public Health, completed her dissertation titled “AIDS Talk” in December 1996.

Boris M. Yoffe was born August 24, 1949. He earned an MD in 1974 from the Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. He has taught gastroenterology at Baylor since 1983.

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.

Known for their red vests, the Women’s Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital (WATCH) is a volunteer service organization that provides supplemental services for patients, families, and staff of Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, TX. The organization was established in 1954 when Texas Children’s Hospital opened in the Texas Medical Center. From the beginning, WATCH has provided such services as, manning information kiosks, managing the coffee shop and toy shop, escorting patients and families through the hospital, conducting tours of visitors, and acting as hosts at medical symposia. They also provided clerical work and translation services. The organization began with 300 volunteers in 1954, and it has grown to over a thousand, providing tens of thousands of volunteer hours each year to all Texas Children’s Hospital locations in the Houston area. The Auxiliary publishes a magazine entitled WATCH that showcases volunteers, service programs, developments in the hospital, and fundraising events.

WATCH also has provided significant fundraising for the hospital through the years. The organization is one of the top ten donors to the Texas Children’s Hospital. The annual Silver Tea is one of the many fundraising projects organized by WATCH. Other projects have included vending machines, Christmas cards, toy shop sales, and an annual bazaar.

Junior Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital is a program that offers junior volunteers between the ages of 15-18 the opportunity to interact with patients or perform administrative duties. The Junior Auxiliary or Junior Council was established in the late-1960s.

Texas Children’s Hospital opened on February 2, 1954 within the Texas Medical Center in Houston, TX. It is the primary pediatric training site for Baylor College of Medicine, which has one of the largest pediatric residency program in the United States. Members of the Houston Pediatric Society were first to recognize the urgent need for a children’s hospital in the area and began a series of informal planning sessions in August 1947. As a result, the Texas Children’s Foundation was organized and chartered expressly to develop plans for the hospital and secure community support for the project. Members of the Junior League of Houston, who sponsored a prenatal and children’s health clinic in the city since 1927, have been instrumental in the history and development of the hospital from the beginning. After the 1993 expansion, Texas Children's Hospital became the largest pediatric medical facility in the country.

SOURCES:

“Women’s Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital”, 20th Anniversary Texas Children’s Hospital, The Junior League of Houston and The Women’s Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital commemorate the 20th Anniversary of Texas Children’s Hospital, 1974

“Foundation and History of Texas Children’s Hospital”, 20th Anniversary Texas Children’s Hospital, The Junior League of Houston and The Women’s Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital commemorate the 20th Anniversary of Texas Children’s Hospital, 1974

“Six Decades of Making a Difference”, Aspire, Texas Children’s Hospital blog, 2016, http://aspire.texaschildrens.org/donor/2016/1469/ [accessed 2/13/2018]

Handbook of Texas Online, "Texas Children's Hospital," accessed January 29, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/sbt06.

The Woman’s Hospital of Texas was founded in 1976 and specializes in care focused on the needs of women.

Edward Trowbridge Wolf, MD was born May 2, 1900 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science in Pre—Med from Pennsylvania State College and in 1948 was honored with a 25 year Service Award from the Phi Delta Epsilon Medical Fraternity there. He was a June 1933 graduate of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Wolf served his internship at the Frankford Hospital in Philadelphia from 1933 to 1934 and at the William Beaumont General Hospital while in the US Army. Upon coming to Houston, he established his 46-year Internal Medicine practice at 4411 Fannin.

During WWII, Dr. Wolf was called up for active duty by the US. Army during which time he served at the rank of Major (MAJ), beginning January 1941, until his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) in February 1943. In addition to stateside assignments, he was a veteran of two years of service with the medical corps in Australia and in the jungles of New Guinea. Following his service in Australia, he returned to inactive military status separating from the service in August 1945 to resume his Houston practice. LTC Wolf received an Honorable Discharge from the Army in May of 1951.

Dr. Wolf was appointed to the Baylor University College of Medicine Clinical Faculty as Assistant/Associate Professor of Medicine in Sept. 1943 and continuously held the position through June 1975. While a member of the medical staff at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Dr. Wolf served as the Chairman of the Metabolic, Endocrine, Joint Disease Medical Care Appraisal Committee and Chairman of the Publications Committee. He was the first editor of News Notes published for the Methodist Hospital medical staff, a post he held for 5 years. Dr. Wolf was chairman of the first Blood Bank Committee of the Harris County Medical Society, and is perhaps most widely known as editor, for 10 years, of the Medical Record and Annals.

As a 45-year member of the Harris County Medical Society he served on the Press Committee. Dr. Wolf was Historian of Houston Society of Internal Medicine and in 1951, President of the Postgraduate Medical Assembly of South Texas. He was a member of the Texas Medical Association for 50 years, serving in 1968, as Chairman of the Technical Exhibits Sub-Committee. An Associate of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Wolf also held memberships in the American Medical Association, American Society of Internal Medicine and the NIH Alumni Association. He served as Consulting Internist for the Texas State Highway Patrol, the Southern Pacific Railroad (1961-1965), and was Consulting Internist and a member of the Board of both Planned Parenthood and the Visiting Nurses Association.

In addition to his professional service, Dr. Wolf contributed to many local organizations including the Deptartment of Medicine Library Fund of the Baylor College of Medicine, the Dept. of Medicine Library Fund of the Methodist Hospital, the Ellard Yow Memorial Library at Methodist Hospital, and The Foundation for the Museum of Medical Science. Edward Trowbridge Wolf, MD passed away July 15 1987.

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.

William Ralph Voss, DVM, was born March 11, 1932, in Parkdale, Arkansas, and died March 7, 1999, in or near Houston. he seems to have lived and possibly practiced in the Crosby, Texas, area. He is buried in the San Jacinto Memorial Park.

Now VNA Health, the Visiting Nurse’s Association is a nonprofit founded in 1908 that provides in-home care for a wide variety of patient needs, including in-home nursing and assisted living, hospice care, various forms of therapy, and lending medical equipment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Faculty Wives was established in 1973-1974 when the medical school was new to the Medical Center “to promote friendship among its members and to be of service to the Medical School and the community”. A 1978 bake sale started the scholarship fund. In addition to scholarships and book money, the organization has donated to many institutions and programs. Female faculty were admitted as of the 1985-1986 school year.

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.

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.

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.

The University of Texas System Valley/Border Health Services Task Force was established in 1988 by the University of Texas System in conjunction with several other schools (University of Texas Heath Science Center at San Antonio and University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston among them) and community organizations to inventory existing health programs in the Rio Grande Valley/border region and use this information to improve health professional education, health services, and research activities in the area. The work continues today in the form of the Texas-Mexico Border Health Coordination Office.
Similarly, the Acres Homes Project (1996-2005) was a joint effort among several community organizations and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston to study and improve community health in the Acres Homes neighborhood on Houston’s northwest side. A committee was assembled to assess the demographics, existing services, and needs of the community, and staff and students of UTHSCH were responsible for the technical aspects of the analysis.

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.

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.

District 9 of the Texas Nurses' Association opened in the Medical Arts Building in 1935. It originally encompassed 14 counties but now includes 8.

The TMC Nursing Education Consortium was organized in 1991 for the purpose of sharing ideas about staff education. It eventually developed three classes, on perinatal care, critical care, and instruction, and offered them to TMC member institutions. It met at the Doctor’s Club until that closed around 2002, and then at another building on Fannin (the reply said “Fannin and Main” but they don’t intersect) for a few more years before fading out.

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.

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

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]

The Texas Hadassah Medical Research Foundation was part of Baylor College of Medicine during the late-1990s and early 2000s. The organization, led in part by Dr. Armin Weinberg, provided medical supplies, cross-cultural collaboration and professional exchanges with Israel, Palestine, Kazakhstan, Russia, and other nations. An important part of its work dealt with radiation effects and events, like Chernobyl and atomic test sites in Kazakhstan. The organization developed the Cancer Registry of survivors of radiation events.

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.

Carl Frederick Tessmer was born in North Braddock, Pennsylvania on May 28, 1912. He received his higher education at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1933 he received his Bachelor of Science with highest honor. From 1933 to 1935, he studied medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School and graduated in 1935 with a Doctor of Medicine degree. Dr. Tessmer completed a rotating internship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 1936. He served his residency in pathology at Presbyterian Hospital, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, 1937. In 1937, he was granted a one year fellowship in pathology, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. On August 21, 1939 he married Maxine Keller. Together they had two sons, Jon and David. Upon the completion of his fellowship Dr. Tessmer accepted a residency in pathology at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1939-1940.

Dr. Tessmer has had a twenty-three year association with the United States Armed Forces. He served in the United States Army Medical Corps, from 1940-1963 and retired with the rank of Colonel.

During the early 1940s he worked in Laboratory Services in hospitals in Hawaii and Saipan. In 1946, he traveled back to the mainland and the East coast. At the Army Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C. he served as a pathologist. He also was part of Operation Crossroads with Task Force One on Bikini Island, 1946 and worked for the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, 1947.

In 1948, Dr. Tessmer was appointed the first Director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Dr. Tessmer's association with the program began even before its formal inception, he took part in a survey in 1946 which actually established much of the basis for the organization. This was with a distinguished pathologist Dr. Shields Warren, Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, and this included a significant amount of clinical data on A-bomb survivors, photographs and blood smears. As matters subsequently developed, he came the director of the program in Japan under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council and Atomic Energy Commission.

The Tessmer family returned to the United States in 1951. For the next three years, 1951-1954, Dr. Tessmer was the Commanding Officer for the Army Medical Research Laboratory in Fort Knox, Kentucky. After attending the Basic Radioisotopes Training Course at the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies in 1954 he was appointed Chief of the Radiation Pathology Branch and Chief of the Basic Science Division for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C. He served as Chief for six years, 1954-1960. Dr. Tessmer returned to Japan in 1960. For the next two years, 1960-1962, he served as the Chief to the Medical General Laboratory (406). Dr. Tessmer travelled to Houston, Texas after a year with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, D.C., 1962-1963.

Dr. Tessmer has been affliated with the University of Texas for over a decade, 1963-1974. He has served as Chief Pathologist and Professor of Pathology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute at Houston and Graduate Faculty member at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Science at Houston. While teaching at UTGSBS he sponsored four graduate students for the doctoral degree. From 1971-1973 he was the Program Coordinator for the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

From 1973-1985, Dr. Tessmer was associated with the Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center, Temple, Texas in several capacities. His appointments were: Chief, Laboratory Service of the Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center, 1973-1985; Medical Director, Medical Technologist School, Southwest Texas University, 1976-1977; Medical Director, Medical Technician School, Temple Junior College, 1973-1985. Dr. Tessmer's last academic post was as Professor, Department of Human Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Texas A&M University College of Medicine, College Station, Texas, 1977-1985.

Dr. Tessmer was very active as a physician, pathologist, adminstrator and professor. He had medical licensure in the states of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Hawaii, and Texas. He wrote forty-five publications. and was a member or fellow of eleven professional organizations. They were: American Society of Clinical Pathologists (Fellow), College of American Pathologists (Fellow), American Association of Pathologists, Radiation Research Society, Washington Society of Pathologists (President, 1959-1960), International Academy of Pathologists, Texas Medical Association, Texas Society of Pathologists, Texas Society for Electron Microscopy, Member, CAP House of Delegates, Texas, 1971-, Sigma Xi. His expertise has been in high demand. He served as a consultant to a number of institutes, committees and agencies. They were: Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, Medical Division, 1956, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Division of Biology and Medicine Advisory Panel, AEC (Californium 252 program), 1968, HEW, Food and Drug Admistration, Radiation Bio-Effects and Epidemiology Advisory Committee, 1972. Dr. Tessmer has had a number of appointments: Diplomate to the American Board of Pathology - Clinical and Anatomic Pathology, 1941, Subcommission on Radiation Pathology, I.C.P.R., 1967-1973, President of the Houston Society of Clinical Pathologists, 1970-1973, Member of the International Commission for Stage Grouping on Cancer and Presentation of Results (I.C.P.R.) (International Society of Radiology), 1973-.

Dr. Tessmer retired from academia in 1985. His sons - Jon F. is a physician in Brownwood, Texas and David P. Lives in Pittsburgh, PA. On October 13, 1992 he married Shizue Murata. They enjoyed living in the Texas countryside and traveling until Dr. Tessmer's death on February 2, 2012.

Judson Ludwell Taylor was born August 5, 1881, at New Waverly, Texas. He died November 28, 1944. Doctor Taylor was a surgeon and served as Commander in the United States Navy. He was a founding member of the American Board of Surgery. He lead the formation of a permanent blood plasma bank for the Gulf Coast area. He served as president of the State Medical Association and Harris County Medical Society, and was instrumental in developing the Post-Graduate Medical Assembly of South Texas. He played a large part in establishing the Dental Branch of The University of Texas.

Martin Junius Taylor, older brother of Judson Taylor, was born in 1870. He was a physician and surgeon in Texas, practicing medicine for 27 years. After receiving his medical degree in 1892 from Memphis Hospital Medical College, he began his practice in Polk County, Texas. He moved to Houston in 1918, where he was a staff member many of the Houston-area hospitals, becoming President of Memorial Hospital staff. He served as president of both the Polk County Medical Society and the Harris County Medical Society. He died on October 21, 1949.

Resolution on the Death of Dr. Judson L. Taylor, Board Minutes of the Houston District Dental Society, February 17, 1945.

“Dr. M. J. Taylor Succumbs after Long Illness”, newspaper clipping, October 21, 1949. MS 210 Judson L. Taylor, MD papers. McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library.

Harvey Grant Taylor was born in San Francisco, California, on July 22, 1903, to Stella May (Benson) and Benjamin Rush Taylor. When he was five, his family moved to the Canadian wilderness near Calgary. His formal schooling did not begin until the family returned to California when he was twelve. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from San Jose State College in 1928 and a Master of Arts in education from Stanford in 1929. While pursuing a doctorate in psychology at Stanford, he enrolled at Duke University School of Medicine, completed his studies in just over three years, and obtained his medical degree in 1939. He interned at Duke Hospital 1939-1940, was an assistant resident there 1940-1941, and served as a pediatric resident and assistant in research in pathology at Alfred I. DuPont Institute 1941-1942. He met married Martha Worth "Pat" Rogers in Atlanta, Georgia in 1942; they had two sons. Taylor served in the Army Medical Corps for which he received a Bronze Star and a battlefield promotion for his work under fire in Okinawa. After the war, Lt. Colonel Taylor returned to Duke as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Assistant Professor of Bacteriology, and Assistant Dean of the School of Medicine 1946-1947, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Associate Professor and Associate Dean there 1947-1949. He returned to Japan between 1949 and 1951 as Deputy Medical Director for Research with the ABCC and as a consultant for the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board in Korea. He served as Director of the ABCC from 1952 to 1954.

Dr. Taylor’s forty-one-year association with MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas, began in 1954. He became MDAH’s first chief of the Section of Pediatrics, and he organized and headed the UT Postgraduate School of Medicine in Houston, which became the UT Health Science Center’s Division of Continuing Education. He retired in 1975 but continued his affiliation with MDAH and the Division of Continuing Education. In 1977, he was named Emeritus Director of Continuing Education at the UT Health Science Center. In 1985, he was named Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at MDAH where his program of care that addressed the social, emotional, and medical needs of pediatric cancer patients formed the foundation for MDAH’s current system of pediatric therapy that integrates medical care and normal childhood development. When he was 87 he implemented an aluminum recycling program at MDAH that continues to generate thousands of research dollars annually.

Dr. Taylor’s ABCC experiences convinced him that teamwork and collaboration were necessary to obtain maximum benefit from medical research and education. He acknowledged parents’ heroic magnanimity and contributions as research partners when they granted permission to use experimental drugs that they were aware could not improve the condition of their child., "but if you can learn something that might help somebody else, go ahead and do it." In the late 1950s, his belief in cooperative research led Dr. Taylor to organize the first collaborative research group in the southwestern region of the U. S., the Southwest Cancer Chemotherapy Study Group, known today as the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG as of 2010).

Dr. Taylor authored scores of articles for medical journals, reports for the ABCC, chapters for medical texts, and editorials throughout his career. In 1990 he published Pioneers in Pediatric Oncology, a collection of autobiographies of thirty-nine of the major contributors to the remarkable progress in this discipline. In 1991 he published Remembrances & Reflections, an autobiography edited by N. Don Macon and John P. McGovern, M.D. He received recognition for his humanitarian achievements through the years. In 1969 he received a special award from the Leukemia Society, in 1973 a $1,000 award from the Center for Interaction, a private Houston foundation, and a certificate of appreciation from the Regional Medical Program of Texas and Texas Regional Medical Program, Inc. He was given honorary Emeritus membership on the Pediatric Executive Committee of the Southwest Oncology Group in 1974 and the American School Health Association Award in 1975. In June and August 1975 tributes were organized in his honor by the UT System and the Harris County Medical Society, respectively. The annual Grant Taylor Lectureship was established by the UT Health Science Center in 1981. Among other honors, he was also given Life Membership in the DeMolay Legion of Honor and, in 1986, the Sidney Kaliski Award from the Texas Pediatric Society, a chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.Dr. Taylor died September 19, 1995. He has an entry in the Handbook of Texas Online.

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.

Walter Jacob Stork, MD, was born in Round Top, Texas in October 27, 1900. He was educated at University of Texas, receiving his M.D. in 1931. Dr. Stork served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps, (1943-1946), served as a physician and taught at Baylor University College of Medicine Department of Radiology (1973-1976). Dr. Stork’s research and publications feature the following topics: “Radiology and on Tuberculosis treatment and prevention and control. He also worked on development of an antibiotic to treat tuberculosis. Further information and a bibliography of Dr. Stork’s papers are available in the first folder of this collection.

Dr. Stork died on September 8, 1994, in Houston.

Dr. Steinberger was born December 20, 1928 in Berlin, Germany, and grew up in Poland. Both of his parents were dentists. His family fled to the Soviet Union in 1939, spent two years in the Gulag Nuziyary, and then settled in Kazakhstan. They returned to Poland after the war but then resettled in American-occupied Germany, at Kassel. Steinberg began medical school in Frankfurt but emigrated to New York in 1947. The rest of the family followed a year later.
Steinberg married Anna (surname?), whom he had met in Kazakhstan, and they ended up in Iowa City, where Steinberg earned his MD from the University of Iowa in 1955. He volunteered for the US Navy for two years and then returned to academics. He was chair of the Department of Endocrinology and Human Reproduction and Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia from 1961 to 1971. In 1971, he moved to Houston to join the new UT Medical School as head of the Department of Reproductive Medicine. He left UT in 1984 to establish the Texas Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Endocrinology (note, as of 2020 this seems not to be in independent operation any more). He retired in 2001.
Dr. Steinberger died in his sleep of lung cancer on October 12, 2008, in Houston. He is buried at Emanu El Memorial Park in Houston.

James H. Steele, DVM, was born in Chicago on April 13, 1913. He earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Michigan State and a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. Steele started the veterinary division of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in 1947. In the 1950s, Steele led development of rabies vaccinations and preventive medicine programs at both the federal and state levels. He traveled to over 60 countries to establish international veterinary public health services. He also served as the United States’ first assistant surgeon general for veterinary affairs in 1968 and then served as the deputy assistant secretary for health and human services in 1970. In 1971, Steele became a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, TX, a role he kept until his retirement in 1983. At the age of 100, Dr. James H. Steele died on November 10, 2013.

This material was sold through the Stanley family medical supply store in Houston. The material in the collection dates from the 1930s to 1950s.

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.

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.

This is now Spina Bifida Houston Gulf Coast. They are no longer associated with the national organization and have changed their name to reflect that. Their primary focus now is The Camp That Love Built, a camp for children with spina bifida. This started in 1975 as a camp for special-needs children and moved to Burton, Texas, in 1998

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.

The South Main Center Association was a non-profit organization founded in Houston, TX in 1976 as a result of a study funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The organization was renamed the “South Main Alliance” in 2005.

The South Main Alliance is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the South Main Street area of Houston, which encompasses the Texas Medical Center, the Houston Museum District, Rice University, Houston Community College Central Campus, the University of St. Thomas, Hermann Park, Reliant Park, the Houston Zoo, Miller Outdoor Theatre, the Houston Texans and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. The institution offers HEART (Health, Education, Art, Recreation and Technology) services.

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.

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.

Robert Stanley Sobocinski was born April 6, 1928 in North Tonawanda, New York. He earned his MD from the University of Buffalo Medical School and served as medical officer in the US Navy between 1952 and 1955, aboard the USS Siboney. He was a family physician in Houston for many years. He died August 4, 2009, and is buried at Forest Park East in Webster

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.

Harold S. Skjonsby, DDS, (July 6, 1937 - July 2017) served as a faculty member at the University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston in the 1960s to the 1980s. He was involved in various faculty committees, including the Evaluation Committee, Developmental Biology Committee, Cell and Tissue Biology Committee, Human Biology Committee, and the Teaching Committee. Skjonsby also served as an academic advisor to dentistry students.

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.

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.

Stanley Schultz was born in New York City in 1931. He earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1952 and then his MD from New York University College of Medicine. His postgraduate studies at Belleville Hospital and Harvard Medical School were interrupted by a stint in the Air Force medical corps. When his Harvard studies were completed, he spent nine years at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine before joining UT Health in 1979. He was known for is work on ion movement across membranes and his significant contributions to oral rehydration therapy. He died October 23, 2014.

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.

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.

Led by Dr. Elva A. Wright, the San Jacinto Lung Association was first established on November 11, 1911 as the Houston Anti-Tuberculosis League. In the early 20th Century, Houston had a higher death rate of tuberculosis than the national average with two in 1000 persons dying from the disease in 1910. At the time, there was no organized movement to address the public health crisis in the city. The founding members were Dr. Wright, Mrs. J. G. Love (General Secretary of United Charities), Sybil Campbell (Headworker at Rusk Settlement House), Dr. T. B. Thorning, and Dr. M. B. Stokes. They modeled the organization on the National Anti-Tuberculosis Association and the Texas State Anti-Tuberculosis Association, which were establish a few years before in 1904 and 1908 respectively.

The Association was a non-profit, community-driven organization dedicated to engage the people of Houston to control, prevent, and educate the community about tuberculosis. Its primary focus and goals were to: Educate public of cause and symptoms. Promote healthy living. Establish free clinic. Employ visiting public health nurses. Develop sanitariums and hospitals. Advocate for laws to control tuberculosis. Encourage city and county health departments to lead fight.

Through the years they operated daily clinics for treatment and diagnosis of tuberculosis as well as conducted mass-screenings using chest X-rays and skin tests. As the the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis became more effective, the Association started to address other respiratory diseases, and provided lung performance tests to screen for emphysema and asthma.

The Association’s first clinic space was a five room cottage at 55 Gable St. It was loaned to the organization by the Mayor of Houston, H. Baldwin Rice. It opened on January 21, 1912, but after 3 months the space was reallocated for a new school, forcing the members to use their private practices to treat tuberculosis patients. On December 13, 1913, the Association opened its first free clinic at 608 Bagby St. It was a modest bungalow built through the donations of area labor unions and merchants. The Association remained at this location, in some capacity, into the 1950s. The bungalow was expanded, moved, and reinforced against the eroding bayou banks in the 1930s. In 1938, the free clinic services were moved to the basement Jefferson Davis Hospital. September 15, 1957, the Association moved into its newly built headquarters at 2901 West Dallas Avenue. Aubrey Calvin led the $125,000 building project with funds donated through the Christmas Seal campaign.

In 1918 the first tuberculosis hospital and sanatorium opened in Houston. Located at what is now Shepherd Drive and Allen Parkway. The hospital was tax-supported and operated by the city with additional funds from Harris County. Facilities were expanded to treat more and more cases, especially children. Through the donation of Mrs. James L. Autry, the Autry School opened in 1925 and provided children with undisrupted education while they were treated at the hospital. In 1947 the City of Houston took over full operation of the clinic and public health nursing services allowing the Association to focus more on its education and prevention services. Through more effective drug treatments and the Association’s programs, like school screening in 1930s, chest X-rays in 1940s, and mobile X-ray units in 1950s, the tuberculosis death rate declined significantly in Houston.

Dr. Elva A. Wright led the effort to establish an anti-tuberculosis association to prevent and treat tuberculosis in Houston. She said, “I’d rather be remembered for the disease I prevented than for the disease I cured.” Dr. Wright was born in Pennsylvania in 1868 and received her medical degree from Northwestern University in 1900. She practiced obstetrics, but her interest turned to tuberculosis and its effect on children during her post-graduate work in Europe and Chicago. She opened her office in Houston within the Temple Building on Main St., and through her practice, she saw how tuberculosis affected children and families throughout the city. She served as president of the Association until her death on July 18 , 1950. She also served as chief of the children’s clinic and Houston TB Hospital as well as chairman of general medical staff. Robert V. Moise took over as president in 1950 after Dr. Wright’s death.

Emmeline J. Renis joined the Association as a nurse in 1920. She shared the administrative work with Dr. Wright, eventually becoming the executive director. She was the executive director through the 1960s.

Dr. Katharine H. K. Hsu was born and educated in China. She came to the United States in 1948. She joined the Association in 1952 and remained an integral part of the organization through the 1970s. In the early 1960s, Dr. Hsu led one of the largest comparative studies that evaluated the multiple-puncture Heaf test against the more established Mantoux and patch tests. Testing more than 5,000 Houston school children, she confirmed that the Heaf test was reliable and offered improvements in mass-screening. She was an associate in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine as well as pediatrician-in-charge for the Tuberculosis Children’s Hospital and Clinic for Houston and Harris County.

Other individuals related to the Association are Dr. Howard T. Barkely (Board of Directors), Dr. Daniel E. Jenkins (Board of Directors), and Dr. W. J. Stork (Chief Radiologist).

From the beginning, the Association utilized Christmas Seal sales as its primary source of funding. First used in Denmark in 1904, Christmas Seals were purchased as extra postage for holiday packages, and the proceeds went to hospitals for children. In 1907 the National Anti-Tuberculosis Association began selling Christmas Seals in America as a fundraising campaign to fight tuberculosis. From $263.82 in 1911 to over $150,000 in 1956, the San Jacinto Lung Association funded all of its programs through the annual Christmas Seals campaign.

The following is a list of the different names of the San Jacinto Lung Association through the years: 1911, Houston Anti-Tuberculosis League 1950, Houston-Harris County Tuberculosis Association 1967, San Jacinto Tuberculosis & Respiratory Diseases Association. 1974, San Jacinto Lung Association Currently, National Lung Association Houston

The following community institutions have been affiliated with the Association through its history: Houston Tuberculosis Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, Harris County Medical Society, Rusk Settlement House, Community Chest, United Charities, Jefferson Davis Hospital.

SOURCES:

Pamphlet, “Unfinished Business: 50th Anniversary of the Houston-Harris County TB Association. MS 009 W. J. Stork, MD papers. McGovern Historical Center.

Organization Records. IC 034 San Jacinto Lung Association. McGovern Historical Center.

Farmer, W. C. “Tuberculosis Pioneers in Texas,” Chest. American College of Chest Physicians, p. 131. http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/data/Journals/CHEST/21104/131.pdf Accessed 9/20/2016

Dr. William Ogburn Russell, Jr., was born in March 24, 1910 in San Jose, California, and frew up on the Russell Ranch near Sacramento. He earned his MD from Stanford University in 1938. He completed his residency at the Mallory Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and then returned to California to practice pathology in Santa Barbara. He moved to Houston in 1948 the first chair of the pathology department at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he remained until 1977. After his retirement from UT MDA he moved to Florida and spent ten years as director of pathology at North Ridge Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. Russell was married to Marolyn Cowart Russell, MD, who was also faculty at MD Anderson. He died in August 2, 1997, and is interred at Woodland Cemetery, Woodland, California.
Thirteen linear feet of his papers are available at the UC Davis archives.

"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.

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.

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).

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.

Lawrence Rodney Rogers, MD, was born March 9, 1920 in Clovis, New Mexico, to a cowboy and a schoolteacher, and died December 13, 2012, in Houston. He grew up in Amarillo, Texas. He was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society during his junior year at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He volunteered for the US Army during World War II and served as a battalion surgeon in the 42nd Rainbow Division in the European Theater, including the Battle of the Bulge, for which he earned three Bronze Stars and four Battle Stars. Accounts of his treatment of prisoners at Dachau and Jewish patients in occupied Austria are on video at the Houston Holocaust Museum.
Dr. Rodgers specialized in internal medicine at Philadelphia General Hospital for three years before returning to Texas to practice in Houston from 1949 to 1994. He was chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Hermann Hospital in 1965 and was active in the effort to establish the University of Texas Medical School at Hermann in 1966-1967 and served the school both as a professor and member of many committees.
Dr. Rodgers served the Harris County Medical Society as TMA delegate, on the executive board, and for a year as vice president, and was for a time editor of the Harris County Physician. He served as President of the Houston Society of Internal Medicine in 1974, of the Houston Academy of Medicine in 1981, of the Doctors’ Club in 1986, and the Houston Philosophical Society in 1994, and supported and participated in many more organizations. He was awarded the Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumni Award by UTMB, and the American College of Physicians awarded him both a Laureate Internist Award for Texas and Mastership of the College.

Robert Alonzo Welch was born in South Carolina and came to Houston around 1886. He started working for the Bute Paint Company (1867-1990) in 1891 as a bookkeeper and resigned in 1927 as secretary-treasurer but remained on it Board of Directors. In the early 1900s, he began investing in oil. When he died in 1952, 15% of his $25 million estate was divided among his 29 employees and the rest was used to establish the Robert A. Welch Foundation in 1954. The Welch Foundation is still a major source of funding for chemistry research in Texas.

Walter Rehrauer was born in New York City on August 3, 1890. His family moved to Houston around 1911 and he graduated from the Texas Dental College in 1914. He served in the U.S. Navy or Naval Reserve during World War I, the inter-war period, World War II and beyond. He died at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio on March 11, 1981, and is buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

Oscar Earnest Ranfranz was born 27 March 1898 in Rochester, Minnesota and died 2 April 1992 in Houston, and is buried at Forest Park Cemetery. He was a dentist and had an office in the Medical Arts Building. Dr. Ranfranz lived in Sherman, Texas, for awhile in the 1920s but had moved to Houston by 1934.

There was a Lutheran Hospital in Houston from the early 1960s to about 1990 but I was unable to find much else on it.

Dr. Raymond Donald Pruitt received the B.S. degree from Baker University, Baldwin City, Kansas, in 1933; the B.A. degree in physiology in 1936 from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar; the M.D. degree from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 1939; the M.S. degree in medicine from the University of Minnesota in 1944; and the M.A. degree from Oxford University in 1963. An internationally renowned cardiologist, Dr. Pruitt was Director of the Graduate School of Medicine at the University of Minnesota from 1968 to 1975; Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine from 1959-1968; Vice President for Medical Affairs and Chief Executive Officer at Baylor from 1966 to 1968; Director, Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, University of Minnesota from 1968-1975; Director for Education, Mayo Foundation, from 1968 to1977; and Founding Dean of the Mayo Medical School from 1971 to 1977. He retired in July 1992 as Professor of Medicine at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, College of Medicine, and Consultant in Cardiology at the Memphis Veterans Affairs Hospital.

During his career, Dr. Pruitt was president of the Association of University Cardiologists, secretary of the American Board for Cardiovascular Disease, president of the American Osler Society, and a member of the National Research Resources Advisory council, the National Advisory Heart Council, the President’s Committee on Heart Disease, Alpha Omega Alpha, and the editorial boards of American Heart Journal (1960-1968) and Circulation (1962-1967 and 1969-1973.) From 1969 to 1970, he was chairman, Section of Internal Medicine, of the American Medical Association, and from 1968 to 1973 he was a member of Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committees.

He earned an honorary D.Sc. degree from Baker University in 1956, the Outstanding Alumnus Award from the University of Minnesota in 1964, the Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award from the University of Kansas in 1967, the Distinguished Service Award from that same university in 1971, an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1980, and a trustee medallion from Baylor College of Medicine in 1988.

Dr. Pruitt was born February 6, 1912 in Wheaton, Minnesota and died January 14, 1993. He was preceded in death by his wife, Lillian, and was survived by his children, Virginia, Kristin, David, Charles, and grandchildren.

Adapted from Houston Medicine, June 1993, Volume 9, page 29.

Harold Trebus Pruessner was born February 19, 1925, in San Antonio. He attended Texas A&M University and earned an MD from the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1948. He served in the Navy during the Korean war and then practiced in Corpus Christi for more than twenty years. He joined the University of Texas Medical School in Houston in 1972 as the second member of its department of family practice. Dr. Pruessner was an early advocate of preventive medicine. He retired in 1993 and died December 21, 2007 at his ranch in Caldwell.

Dr.Homer Edward Prince was born June 2, 1904 in Milam County, Texas. practiced general medicine in Galveston, Texas between 1930-1936. Between 1936-1958 Dr. Prince focused his practice on allergies in Houston, Texas. There he organized the Association of Allergists for Mycological Investigations in 1938. Between 1958-1962 he continued his practice half-time in Crockett, Texas. Dr. Prince would return to full-time practice in Waco, Texas, between 1962-1965. He would continue practicing in Waco until 1976. Dr. Prince died in Dallas County on June 5, 1990, and is buried at Evergreen Memorial Park in Crockett.

Evelyn Jane Hawkins Preston was born in Houston on November 21, 1920; she was a third-generation Texan. She graduated from Baylor College of Medicine in 1953 and practiced in Houston until 1978, then in Austin between 1978 and 1995, when she retired and returned to her hometown. Dr. Preston was a pioneer of telemedicine. She died November 7, 2001, just shy of her 81st birthday.

The Postgraduate Medical Assembly of South Texas functioned as an educational organization for physicians in East and South Texas from its founding in 1932 to its dissolution in 1970. This collection (14 linear feet) was transferred to the Archive from the custodial care of the Houston Academy of Medicine in August, 1978. Betty (Mrs. William H.) Dahme and Jack Mayfield, M.D. were instrumental in securing the collection's transfer. Minutes, programs, membership roles and files related to the Medical Records and Annals constitute the bulk of the collection. All extant files from the Assembly were transferred to the Archive. However no records from the parent organization, South Texas Medical Society, or from the Eight, Ninth and Tenth Councilor Districts are present.

In 1897, physicians from counties within the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Councilor Districts formed the South Texas Medical Association. Within a few years the name changed to the South Texas District Medical Society and by 1914 the Society had adopted the South Texas Medical Record, published by the Harris County Medical Society, as their official organ. Biannual meetings were sponsored to serve as a clearinghouse for members' papers for discussions or clinics on medical topics. In 1931, Dr. B. T. Vanzant, President of the District, proposed abolishing the fall meeting held in Houston each year and forming a postgraduate assembly for the purpose of bringing medical authorities to Texas so that continuing education for its members would be convenient and inexpensive. The first postgraduate assembly was held at the Rice Hotel, November 28-30 and December 1, 1932 with 600 physicians registering to hear Drs. Walter Alvarez and Donald Balfour from Mayo Clinic, Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the A.M.A., Dr. E. W. Oschner from Tulane University and 16 other notable physicians speak in their fields of expertise. The Assembly expanded over the years, obtaining a registration of 2300 physicians on their Silver Anniversary in 1959 (the meeting for 1943-45 were cancelled because of WW II). Papers from the annual meetings and programs were published in the Assembly's own journal, The Medical Record and Annals.

The South Texas District Medical Society, whose educational functions were being fulfilled by the Assembly, closed its operations in 1951. Before this time, the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Councilor Districts had established their own medical societies. As more specialty societies assumed responsibility for the continuing education of their members and airlines diminished the time necessary to travel to distant meetings, interest in supporting the Postgraduate Assembly declined. Inb1970 the Assembly closed its books, with the remaining money being donated to the Museum of Medical Science in Houston.

Born October 18, 1918 on a farm in Taylor, Texas; his grandparents were Czech immigrants. He graduated from Granger High School at 16 in 1934 and then from the University of Texas in 1939. He earned his MD from the University of Texas Medical Branch in December 1942, and then interned at Hermann Hospital in 1943. He served in the US Army Medical Corps from December 1943 to December 1946, as a lieutenant colonel and then a colonel. During his service, he graduated from the School of Military Neuropsychiatry. He was a resident in psychiatry at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas from November 1946 to June 1947 and at the Menninger School of Psychiatry, then located in Topeka, Kansas, from 1947 to 1949.
Dr. Pokorny joined the staff at the Houston VA Hospital in 1949 and became Chief of the Psychiatry Service in 1955; he remained at the VA until 1973. He was also part of the Baylor College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry from 1949 until his retirement in 1989. He was active in numerous professional organizations and won several awards for his contributions. He died October 9, 2007, just shy of his 89th birthday.

John Roberts Phillips was born on February 28, 1904 in Quantico, Maryland. He graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1923 and completed his Master of Surgery at the University of Minnesota in 1931. He received a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic from 1929 to 1933. In 1929, he married Rebecca Jane Hall. In 1933, Phillips started his own surgical practice in Houston and served as the Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Texas and as the Assistant Professor of Surgery at Baylor University in Houston, Texas. He authored and co-authored over 124 articles published in various medical journals. Phillips retired in 1967 and died April 19, 1983.

Rebecca Jane Hall Phillips was born on December 14, 1903 in Maryland. She became a registered nurse at the University of Maryland. She served as a surgical nurse from 1927-1929 in Maryland, as a nurse at the Mayo Clinic from 1927-1932, and then starting in 1933, served as the surgical nurse, office manager, and public relations manager for her husband, John Roberts Phillips’ practice in Houston, TX.

David Paton was born August 16, 1930, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father Richard Townley Paton founded the world’s first eye bank in 1946 and his grandfather, Stuart Paton, MD, was a psychiatrist and neurologist. Paton graduated from Princeton University in 1952 and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1956. He finished an internship at Cornell University Medical College in 1957 and then worked for the National Institute of Health and Johns Hopkins University. Paton moved to Houston in 1971 to join the Cullen Eye Institute at Baylor College of Medicine. He spent 1982 to 1984 at King Khaled Eye Hospital in Saudi Arabia, 1984 to 1986 as the founder and director of eye surgery company OcuSystems, and then seven years at Weill Cornell Medical College. He has been a professor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine since 1998.

As of 2021, Sam H. Parris is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Texas Dental Branch.

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

Sharon K. Ostwald was born January 6, 1941 in Pearland, Texas.

Dr. Ohlhausen was born in Galveston on October 13, 1912 and died in Houston on December 20, 1995; he is buried at Forest Park Westheimer Cemetery. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1933 and from UTMB in 1938. Registered for the draft 16 October 1940; enlisted 1 January 1942. He is Gazetteer record 11175.

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.

The National Heart and Blood Vessel Research and Demonstration Center was established January 1, 1975, at Baylor College of Medicine, by the National Heart and Lung Institute, National Institutes of Health. The Center existed from 1975 through 1982, and research conducted at the Center resulted in nearly 800 publications.

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.

Walter Henrik Moursund was born in Fredericksburg, Texas on August 13, 1884. One of eight children, he was the son of District Judge Albert Waddell and Henrikke M. Moursund, both immigrants from Norway. Dr. Moursund was later to attribute his interest in the study of medicine to the kindliness of a family doctor who helped him recover from a childhood illness. Following graduation from Fredericksburg High School, Dr. Moursund received his medical degree at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, in 1906. He married the former Freda Adelaide Plate of Seguin in 1907 and for the next several years was a general practitioner in Fredricksburg, Seguin, Marion, Lavernia and Sulphur Springs, Texas. During World War I he served with the army as a captain and then major.
Dr. Moursund's association with Baylor University College of Medicine began in 1911 when he joined the staff as an assistant in pathology and bacteriology. The college was at this time located in Dallas, and in the ensuing years Dr. Moursund served in a variety of roles, including professor of physiology, pathology, clinical pathology, bacteriology and hygiene. He also served as secretary and registrar, as acting dean, and finally as dean from 1923 until his retirement in 1953. His tenure spanned the years of Baylor's move to Houston in 1943 and its growth as part of the newly-created Texas Medical Center. His file of clippings and other material documenting the medical school's growth became the basis for A History of Baylor University College of Medicine 1900-1953, published by Dr. Moursund in 1956. Material concerning other medical institutions in the Houston area provided the basis for a second book, Medicine in Greater Houston 1836-1956,which was prepared as a manuscript but never published. Dr. Moursund's professional affiliations included membership in the American Medical Association, the Southern Medical Association, and the Harris County Medical Society. The Texas Medical Association elected him to emeritus membership in 1950. He was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree by Baylor University in 1946, and in 1951 the Walter H. and Freda Moursund Endowment was established at Baylor College of Medicine. Upon retirement from Baylor in 1953, Dr. Moursund was named dean emeritus and director of endowment. Dr. Moursund died April 2, 1959, and is buried at Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas.

John T. Moore, MD, was the first man in the United States “to use radium as part of an operation in the treatment of cancer, he was one of the pioneers in clinical research,” according to an obituary that appeared in the Houston Post, section 1, page 6 on March 20, 1951. Dr. Moore was born in Moore’s Grove. He attended Sam Houston Normal Institute. He was educator before studying medicine. He was superintendent of schools in Trinity, Texas and then Orange, Texas. Dr. Moore received his master’s degree from Texas Christian University and his medical degree from the University of Texas School of Medicine at Galveston. He did graduate work at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Vienna. He was a former president of the Harris County Medical Society. He was a member of the Texas Surgical Society and other medical organizations. Dr. Moore was one of the organizers of the Texas State Medical Society.

Dr. Moore was born September 4, 1864 and died March 1, 1951.

Maurice J. Meynier, Jr., was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Oct. 16, 1904. His family moved to Houston when he was twelve, and following his graduation from Houston High School in 1920, he enrolled in what was then the Rice Institute, from which he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1927. He attended medical school at the University of Texas at Galveston, completing a senior externship at St. Mary's Hospital there and receiving his Doctor of Medicine degree In 1931. Dr. Meynier then served a two-year internship/residency at the Graduate Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, continuing his training as a resident in gynecology-obstetrics at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, from 1933 to 1934. Returning to Houston, he established a practice in obstetrics and gynecology, leaving to serve in the Army Air Force Medical Corps from December 1942 until February 1946. He resumed his practice in Houston at that time, continuing until his retirement in 1977.

Dr. Meynier's concern with community issues was evident throughout his career. In the late 1930's, he advocated reform of the ambulance system in Houston. In December 1940, while serving as chairman of the Health Council of the Community Chest's Council of Social Agencies, he participated in Houston's first annual Public Health Institute. He stressed the need for a non-politically controlled planning committee for coordinating public health programs, including pre-natal and venereal disease clinics. He was later active in a campaign to institute the city manager form of government which he felt would permit needed expansion of the city health department's services.

In the mid-1950's, controversy arose over the proposed location of additional hospital facilities for the indigent. Dr. Meynier, as a member of the Hospital Committee of the Harris County Medical Society, recommended adding beds to the existing facilities at Jefferson Davis Hospital, rather than building a new hospital in the Medical Center. The opposing plan was adopted, however, resulting in the construction of Ben Taub Hospital.

Dr. Meynier was strongly opposed to liberalization of state laws governing abortion. He served from 1968 to 1970 on the Texas Medical Association's Committee on Abortion, during which time he vigorously opposed endorsement by the Association of such liberalization. He continued his efforts through the Houston Right-to-Life group, in which he served as a vice-president.

Dr. Meynier served as clinical associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas in Houston. His research and publishing included work in intrathecal injection of alcohol for intractable pain of the pelvis; cervicitis and infertility; vitamin A deficiency in fetal deformity; use of antibiotics in patients with poor obstetrical histories; and simple removal of cerclage suture for incompetent cervix. His patents and original designs included those for an intra-vaginal tampon, a breast pump, vaginal pessary, cervical biopsy and coning instrument, and life preserver.

Dr. Meynier's professional associations are numerous. He served as president respectively of the Texas Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in I960, the Houston Gynecological and Obstetrical Society in 1964, and the Harris County Medical Society in 1969. He was a Diplomate the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a Fellow In the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and a Fellow In the American College of Surgeons. He served as chief of the obstetrics service and as president of the medical staff at St. Joseph's Hospital and was a consultant on the staffs of Methodist and Hermann Hospitals.

Dr. Meynier died March 24, 1997. His obituary was in the Houston Chronicle Mar. 26, 1997, p. 28A.

John Stirling Meyer was born February 24, 1924, in London, England. He earned a scholarship to the Kent School in Connecticut when he was 16, during World War II, which got him out of London. H earned his BS at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, a Master’s from the Montreal Neurological Institute, and an MD and CM from McGill University. He completed his training at Yale University and later earned additional degrees in neurology and psychiatry, neurophysiology, and neuropathology from Harvard.
Dr. Meyer became a US citizen (in 1952?) when he was needed for the Korean War. He was drafted by the Navy and sent to the Pacific, where he was put in charge of head injuries, first on hospital ships and then at the US-commandeered Yokosuka Hospital in Japan.
He returned to Harvard for a few years and then in 1957, when he was only 33, he became a founding professor and chairman of neurology at Wayne State University School of Medicine. At the time, he was the youngest person ever to hold the position as chair and professor of a medical department in the United States.
Dr. Meyer worked on the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke under both Kennedy and Johnson, and came to Houston to Baylor College of Medicine after catching the attention of Michael DeBakey. Dr. Meyer wrote or edited 30 textbooks and 930 articles. He retired from Baylor as a professor emeritus but was still working at United Neurology when he died on February 17, 2011. He is buried at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church Cemetery in Houston.

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.

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.

Charles Fredrick (C. F.) Menninger, MD (also known as Dr. C. F. and CFM), began the Menninger Clinic in 1925. Although not initially a trained psychiatrist, he had an interest in psychiatry and is considered a pioneer in the then-emerging field. Two of his sons specialized in psychiatry at medical school and joined him in operating the clinic. Karl Augustus Menninger, who recently had graduated from medical school, joined him in the clinic late that same year. His son William Claire Menninger, Karl's younger brother, joined the clinic in 1927. Dr. Karl and Dr. Will, as the brothers were known, became leaders in the field. Dr. Karl managed the medical side of the clinic, while Dr. Will managed the finances and administration as the CEO. When Dr. Will died unexpectedly in 1966, Dr. Karl briefly took over as CEO before Dr. Will's son Roy Menninger, MD, known as Dr. Roy, was elected CEO. When Dr. Roy retired in 1993, his younger brother, William Walter (Walt) Menninger, known as Dr. Walt, succeeded him. John McKelvey succeeded Dr. Walt in 2001, and Dr. Walt was named chairman of The Menninger Foundation board of trustees. Menninger moved to Houston in 2003 after it formed an affiliation with The Methodist Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine.

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.

Founded on September 1, 1907 as the Baptist Sanitarium, Memorial Hospital began as a two-story, wood-framed building at the end of the trolley line on Lamar and Smith. It had 17 beds and eight trained nurses on staff. It was the second general hospital established in Houston after St. Joseph Hospital which opened in 1887. It was also the second Baptist-supported hospital in the United States. The other was the Missouri Baptist Sanitarium in St. Louis.

In 1904 the only general hospital in Houston, St. Joseph Hospital, had 125 beds. The lack of hospital care available in Houston at the time became a discussion between two Baptist ministers, Dr. L. T. Mays (South Main Baptist Church) and Rev. D. R. Pevoto (Clark Avenue Baptist Church). They wanted to open a new hospital to serve the people of Houston regardless of race, religion, or wealth. It remained only an idea for years as discussions began to involve more people in the community, like Dr. J. L. Gross (pastor of First Baptist Church of Houston), Dr. George Truett, and George Hermann. Mrs. Charles Stewart, member of First Baptist Church of Houston gave $1,000 as a down payment to purchase the two-story Ida J. Rudisill Sanitarium for $18,000. The building had only been in use for two years since 1905. Mrs. Rudisill stayed on serving as director of nursing until about 1912. In 1910, the Baptist Convention of Texas was officially affiliated with the hospital. Pevoto, who managed the hospital until 1917, wrote, “ In those days a hospital was looked upon with apprehension as just a place where one went to die. We decided to change all that.”

Memorial Hospital expanded “piecemeal” one building or building addition at a time, adding more beds as they could. The original Rudisill Building stood for over 50 years. Becoming the nurses quarters and even moved across the street at one point. Below is a brief timeline for the early expansion of Memorial Hospital:

1911: A four-story fireproof building was built and increased capacity to 50 beds.
1915: The hospital built an eight-story building and doubled the capacity to 100 beds.
1924: “A” wing was added, increasing the capacity to 215 beds.
1942: Another addition increased capacity to almost 300 beds.
1945: H. R. Cullen gave $2 million to Lillie Jolly School of Nursing for the construction of the Professional Nurses’ Building.
Through its history, Memorial Hospital was a leader in health care in Houston, establishing many “firsts”:

First chartered school of nursing, 1909
First general hospital to offer psychiatric care, 1920s
First “fever box” in the US to resuscitate newborns, 1930s
First therapeutic tank to treat polio, 1930s
First hospital in Texas to have air-conditioned operating rooms and nurseries, 1930s
First hospital in Texas to receive penicillin shipment, 1943
First hospital to expand services into the Houston suburban areas and developed the hospital satellite system, 1960s
In the 1940s, Memorial opted not to move into the Texas Medical Center, remaining in downtown where it was closer to patients. With the same, consistent mission to provide the communities of Houston with excellent health care at a reasonable cost, Memorial developed the hospital satellite system. In the 1960s, it open three community hospitals in the Southwest (1962), Southeast (1963), and Northwest (1966). The new system allowed regional hospitals to serve the community around them while sharing services, resources, and costs with other hospitals in the Memorial Healthcare System. As W. Wilson Turner, administrator of Memorial Hospital 1958-1981 remarked, “Memorial was a pioneer of multiple health care units under one administrative management in the country.”

In 1971, in order to accept federal and community funds, Memorial Hospital broke ties with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. After 70 years, Memorial closed its downtown hospital in 1977 and moved to the Southwest location on the Southwest Freeway at Beechnut. Everything was moved patients, equipment, supplies, furnishings, and even the Bowles Chapel, which was disassembled and rebuilt piece by piece.

In 1997 Memorial Hospital merged with Hermann Hospital, becoming Memorial Hermann Healthcare System. Today, it is one of the largest non-for-profit healthcare system in Texas with roughly 19 hospitals and several specialty service points throughout the Greater Houston area.

Other notable individuals in the collection:

Lillian Irene Wilson Burnett Jolly (Lillie Jolly) was born near Louisville, Kentucky in 1877. She graduated from the School of Nursing at the Kentucky School of Medicine in 1907. Before attending school she worked in mental health institutions. In 1908, she moved to Houston to be a surgeon’s assistant and director of nurses at the Baptist Sanitarium (later Memorial Hospital). Lillie Jolly was director of the Hospital Training School for Nurses for over 30 years, 1908-1947. In 1945 the school was renamed in her honor, the Lillie Jolly School of Nursing. From 1917 to 1920, she served as superintendent, leading the hospital for two years before re-focusing her attention to the nurses and the nursing school. Robert Jolly became superintendent and served in the position from 1920-1945. Robert and Lillie Jolly were married at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day 1924. She retired in 1947. Lillie Jolly died in 1953.

Robert Jolly was born in Cave City, Kentucky in 1885. He was a Baptist minister. He became the Business Manager for the Baptist Sanitarium in 1919. In 1920 he took over as superintendent for the hospital, a position he held until his retirement in 1945. As superintendent, Jolly oversaw the development and growth of the hospital for 24 years. Jolly was a great fundraiser and worked to make Memorial Hospital one of the leaders in health care. In 1922, the American College of Surgeons awarded Memorial its hospital certification. Jolly also represented the hospital in national organizations, taking leadership positions in the Texas Hospital Association, American Protestant Hospital Association, American Hospital Association, and American College of Hospital Administrators. Robert Jolly died in 1952.

Lela Smith Hickey (Mrs. H. H.) graduated from the Lillie Jolly School of Nursing in 1933. She donated a collection of about 31 photographs that depict the nurses, nursing students, physicians, and facilities of Memorial Hospital in 1932, including the operating room supervisor “Birdie” Byrd. According to a note found in the collection, she was a distant cousin of D. R. Pevoto, founder of Memorial Hospital, and worked “CU” [perhaps, Intensive Care Unit] until early 1960s. Lela Smith Hickey died May 7, 1970.

Col. J. W. Neal and wife, Elizabeth Mitchell Neal, founders of the Cheek-Neal Coffee Co. that made Maxell House famous, were staunch Baptists who supported Memorial Hospital. He became a trustee in the 1920s, and they created two trust funds at the hospital in memory of their children Margaret Ophelia Neal for sick and disabled children and James Robert Neal for X-ray treatment of cancer. In 1944 Mrs. Neal gave Memorial Hospital the block used for their Nurses’ Professional Building in Downtown Houston. Hugh Roy Cullen provided the funds to construct the building, donating $2 million. The building was completed in 1948.

SOURCES:

“History of Memorial Hospital Much Like city’s dynamic story” by Betty Ewing. Houston Chronicle, 1982, 11/27. Reference Files; Memorial Hospital System [Baptist Sanatorium], (Houston, Texas); John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center, Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library
“Memorial Hospital Facility to Celebrate Its 75th Anniversary at banquet Tonight” by Mary Jane Schier. Houston Post, 1982, 11/29. Reference Files; Memorial Hospital System [Baptist Sanatorium], (Houston, Texas); John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center, Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library
News clipping, Box 9, Folder 22, “Mrs. Lillie Jolly has Always Liked to Help People” by Bess Whitehead Scott, [unknown newspaper], Houston, TX. 1938, 01/09. Memorial Hospital records; IC 022; John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center, Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library
“Memorial’s 50th Year Observed” by George DeMenil. Houston Post, 1957, 08/25. Reference Files; Memorial Hospital System [Baptist Sanatorium], (Houston, Texas); John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center, Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library
Note and catalog card for P-176 in Lela Smith Hickey Collection. Memorial Hospital Photograph Collection; IC 103; John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center, Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library
Francis, Ted and Carole McFarland. 1982. The Memorial Hospital System: The First Seventy-Five Years. Special Commemorative Edition. Houston: Larksdale Press.
Memorial Hermann website, About us, http://www.memorialhermann.org/about-us/, Accessed: 10/12/2018
Handbook of Texas Online, Diana J. Kleiner, “MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM,” accessed September 19, 2018, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/sbm07.

Joseph Louis Melnick was born October 9, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York but his family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, when he was seven years old. He earned a B.S. from Wesleyan University in 1936, followed by a Ph.D. in physiological chemistry from Yale University in 1939. He served on the faculty at Yale from 1942 to 1957.
After a year as chief of the Virus Laboratories at the National Institute of Health Division of Biologics Standards, Melnick joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine Department of Virology and Epidemiology in 1958. He was dean of Baylor’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences from 1968 to 1991.
Dr. Melnick’s specialty was medical virology, with a focus on polioviruses. He was among the first to demonstrate that the polio virus invades the intestine of a host rather than the central nervous system. He was part of a team that developed thermostabilized live polio vaccine for areas that lacked deep-freeze storage. His research also determined that the Albert Sabin vaccine was safer for the nervous system than other vaccines. He showed that the polio virus could survive long-term in sewage and was mainly transmitted by fecal contamination, often through poorly-washed hands. He and Dr. Dorothy Horstmann determined that the virus could also be transmitted by flies, although this wasn’t the primary method.
Melnick’s team was also among the first to recover human pathenogenic viruses from surface waters and his laboratory was instrumental in developing methods to detect and monitor viruses in the environment. He also had a longstanding interested in virus taxonomy and was the first to name and classify several virus groups. Melnick’s team at Baylor performed research in the late 1960s that would later implicate herpes simplex and other viruses as the root cause of some forms of cervical cancer.
Dr. Melnick was elected the first chair of the Virology Section of the International Association of Microbiologcal Societies, was president of the US Commission on Polio Eradication, and chair of the Advisory Committee on Viral Hepatitis for the Center for Disease Control. He was awarded honorary posts in Israel, for his contributions to controlling a polio outbreak in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the 1980s, Bulgaria, China, Argentina, and Russia. He also served 30 years on the World Health Organization Expert Panel on Viral Diseases. He was the first American virologist elected to lifetime membership of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, and in 1958 was inducted into the Polio Hall of Fame. He authored over 1,000 items on virology and received numerous awards.
Dr. Melnick retired from Baylor in 1998 and died January 7, 2001

Medical World News (MWN) was a weekly publication that focused on medical developments, issues, and personalities. It was published for 35 years from 1960 to 1994. Self-described as "The Newsmagazine of Medicine,” Medical World News was the only news magazine devoted solely to medicine during its years of publication.

With Maxwell M. Geffen as the publisher, the first issue of Medical World News hit the newsstand on April 22, 1960. It began as a biweekly publication, but quickly increased its frequency to every week. From the beginning Medical World News aspired to be more than just another medical journal. As Geffen describes in his first Letter from the Publisher, “Medical World News proposes to offer a new, unique and clear channel of communication between the profession and the world around it, and to set new standards of accuracy and disclosure, covering every phase of medical journalism.” (MWN, 1960, 04/22, p.11) It was a unique and independent publication with the freedom to report all aspects on controversial issues in medicine. Its target audience was the physician, and the image-rich content was “designed to facilitate communications and easy reading.” (MWN, 1960, 04/22, p.11) Within the first 2 months, Medical World News covered “the Kefauver investigation, the rapid developments surrounding medical care for the aged, the debate of the ‘polio greats,’ the use of oral contraceptives and the exciting conversation of tumorous cells into normal cells by a Rockefeller Institute scientist.” (MWN, 1960, 06/03, p.9)

Morris Fishbein, previously editor of Journal of the American Medical Association, was the first editor for the Medical World News. He shaped the tone and concepts of the publication, emphasizing photography to differentiate Medical World News from other medical journals. He had a photo staff of six people, including Rick Giacalone as art director and Don Monaco and Martha Roberts as photo editors. The work of the staff and amount of images created, reviewed, and used for each story was a massive undertaking. Geffen describes, “[the picture staff] handles about 30,000 pictures every year. For a single story, they may scrutinize as many as 150 color slides or a dozen rolls of 36-frame black-and-white film--from which they will choose only four or five of the best for publication.” (MWN, 1967, 03/31, p.21) To capture all the footage, Medical World News hired freelance photographers for assignments all over the world. Many were members of the American Society of Magazine Photographers. Notable photographers who contributed to issues are George Tames, Art Shay, Joe Baker, James Pickerell, Ivan Massar, Jerry Miller, Al Geise, Mike Shea, Dennis Galloway, and Bob Phillips. Some photographers were associated with photo agencies, like Black Star and Magnum Photos.

Ownership of the Medical World News changed throughout its 35-year history. The following is a list of publishing companies, their locations, and years of ownership: Medical World News Publishing Company, New York, NY, 1960-1967 McGraw-Hill Publications, New York, NY, 1967-1981 Hospital Equities International (HEI) Publishing Company, Houston, TX, 1981-1985 Miller Freeman Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1985-1992 Axel Springer Publications, New York, NY, 1992-1994

By the 1990s Medical World News had become a monthly magazine. Nicholas K. Zittel was the last editor, and he wrote in his final Editor’s Note, “Over the years, MWN has fought valiantly to fulfill [its] promise. The ‘war on cancer,’ the artificial heart, Medicare, advances in neonatology, the halcyon days of drug discovery, political battles in Congress. With its comprehensive coverage of these and other critical issues MWN has fought tirelessly for and on behalf of the primary-care physician.” (MWN, February 1994, p.2) The last issue of the Medical World News was published in February 1994.

SOURCES: Medical World News, 1960, 1967, 1994; IC 077 Medical World News Photograph Collection