Saving Lives, Training Caregivers, Making Discoveries : A Centennial History of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

In 1881 the voting citizens of Texas located their state's first university medical school on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. Some probably wished to keep sick people away from the mainland. Others knew that the residents of Galveston, the state's largest city at that time, had enthusiastically embraced the best traditions of American medicine throughout their city's history. Voters honored these efforts by granting permission to establish the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), a feat that required ten years of decisive struggles. The first medical students finally walked the steps of the Ashbel Smith Building (Old Red) in October 1891. After more than one hundred years, including the great storm of 1900 that ravaged Galveston and took more than six thousand lives, this pioneering institution is still flourishing as a major academic health center devoted to saving lives, training caregivers, and making discoveries that improve health care. Saving Lives, Training Caregivers, Making Discoveries is a comprehensive introduction to this institution's historical development. Grounded in meticulous archival research and oral history interviews, the book describes, explains, and interprets major features of human interaction that have propelled the growth and development of UTMB. These features include political networks, financial resources, campus buildings, care of sick patients, training of different types of caregivers, scientific research and humanities inquiry, patterns of daily life, extensive outreach commitments, and incessant concerns with maintaining the highest standards of academic medicine. Emphasis is given to the recurring interplay between key individuals and groups who shaped and changed the institution for more than ten decades. Numerous photos, tables, and appendices provide readers with visual and statistical evidence. This is a landmark history of one of Texas' venerable institutions.