The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has been the home of cutting-edge research and education for over 130 years. David McComb said it best in his book Galveston, A History, "if you can't be cured at the medical branch, you're already dead."
How did Galveston Island, a sandbar two miles off the coast of Texas, become the home to such an important facility?
In 1876, Texas adopted its seventh and final state constitution. Article 7 of this new constitution focused on education and directed the legislature to establish, organize, and provide for the maintenance, support, and direction of a university of the first class, to be located by the vote of the people of the state of Texas, and styled the University of Texas.
The University of Texas at Austin was established in 1883. It was later agreed that a separate medical department would also be established. For the next five years, Galveston, Austin, Houston, and Tyler, Texas, would compete to become the home of the Medical College of the University. Luckily for Galveston, the island was already known for its medical education system.
Texas Medical College was chartered on February 8th, 1860. It opened on the island in 1865 as Galveston Medical College, led by a physician named Greensville Dowell, and St. Mary's Infirmary, established in 1867 by a group of French nuns. Although not a medical school, it was Texas' first Catholic hospital and played a crucial role during the devastating Yellow Fever outbreaks of early Galveston.
Considering Galveston Island already had a solid medical school and hospital system, and locals fought hard to bring the UT Medical Branch to the city, in the fall of 1880, The Galveston Daily News reported, "No city in the South possesses better hospital accommodations or a greater diversity of diseases than Galveston." And the island DID have a lot of diseases.
In the 1880s, Galveston Island was one of the most populous cities in Texas, as well as a major port, bringing people and cargo from around the world. The island's subtropical climate and global connectivity is a perfect breeding ground for diseases, not only to spread, but to study. Early physicians in Galveston fought Yellow Fever, influenza, bubonic plague, and poliomyelitis. And worked to find ways to treat and prevent these fatal ailments.
Yellow Fever was prevalent in the 1800s, but those campaigning for the medical college argued that this real-world experience would help create a practical foundation for medical students. The idea being that the more exposure students had to different diseases, the more knowledge they would have when they graduated. The public found this argument convincing, and in 1881, the people of Texas finally voted to establish the main campus in Austin and a medical branch in Galveston; 70 percent of the voters chose Galveston over Houston.
However, the city had a hard time finding the funding to put the new school together, and local businessmen stepped in to help. One of those businessmen was John Sealy, a banker, railroad magnate, and merchant. Though he died in 1884, he set aside $50,000 of his fortune for charity. So, the John Sealy Hospital was built in his honor and completed in 1890. The hospital worked with the University of Texas to train medical students, and throughout the years, the Sealy family continued to provide financial support for the hospital. The Sealy and Smith Foundation was created in 1922 for this purpose. As of 2017, it has donated and committed more than $900 million to support hospitals and other medical needs in Galveston.
Let's take this back to the 1890s…
After 10 years of political and economic struggles, the Medical Department of the University of Texas finally got a building of its own, and it opened for instruction in October of 1891 with 23 students and 13 faculty members. The annual tuition was just over 100 per year. Accounting for inflation, this is just under $3,500 today.
When it first opened, the University of Texas medical branch was for men only. But what about the women? Opportunities for medical education were few and far between for women at this time. The John Sealy Hospital Training School for Nurses was established in 1890 and absorbed into the UT system in 1896.
The impressive new medical college was designed in a Romanesque revival style by the island's most prominent architect, Nicholas Clayton. It was constructed of granite, sandstone, and red brick, known as the Ashbel Smith Building. In Galveston, it is affectionately referred to as 'Old Red.' One newspaper reported that "the medical branch for the state university has begun its first session under circumstances that should be the source of much pride of all Texans, especially Galvestonians. The building is one of the finest in the South."
At the time of the university's opening, The newspaper interviewed two potential students touring the new college campus. One said, "The medical branch of the Texas University is very highly recommended and the building is a very magnificent structure. Speaking for myself, I don't hardly think I care to go any further." But after a few weeks on the island, the students may have had second thoughts. Historian David McComb wrote, "Early students were treated as temporary visitors to tolerate, but not befriend. Adolescent street kids tormented them as they trudged home from classes carrying skulls and pieces of skeletons to study. Bone jugglers, bone jugglers, they yelled." And if being mocked by local teenagers wasn't enough, they also faced some light hazing from their fellow students. To be entirely accepted into the student community, they were served a less-than-pleasant meal. Firstly, they were given dissecting tools instead of forks and knives. Then, their meal was placed in front of them, and they were instructed to eat the pile of "autopsy meat and boils and pus." Fortunately, it was actually just beef and creamed onions.
Marie de la Landre Dietzel and Sally Thompson were the first two women admitted to the medical department in 1894. At the beginning of the semester, the chairman of the school's department of surgery, James Thompson, acknowledged the ladies in his address to the incoming class, "The advent of lady students among you I hail with pleasure, for I am firmly convinced that their presence will provide beneficial in correcting certain inelegant mannerisms and habits which the gregarious male is prone to acquire."
Marie de la Landre Dietzel was only 15 when she enrolled and was the first woman to graduate from UTMB in 1897. Though she participated in the graduation ceremony, she didn't receive her diploma at that time. She had to wait until she turned 18. We don't actually know if her presence proved beneficial for those gregarious male students, but we do know that she opened her own practice in 1898 and continued living and working in Galveston Until she died in 1958.
By the year 1900, the institution had graduated 259 men and 6 women as physicians, 76 men and 6 women as pharmacists, and 54 women as nurses.
Although there had been strides in including women in medical education, segregation laws in Texas prohibited black students from attending the all-white medical college.
In 1949, Herman Barnett fought for the right to attend a medical school in his home state. After serving in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman, He became the second African American to desegregate a medical school in the United States. Herman Barnett applied to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, although the state had stern segregation laws. UTMB would admit him on one condition, that he would transfer to the state's black medical college once it was completed. Although conversations were being had and plans were being made, that school was never actually completed.
After Barnett became UTMB's first black intern and resident, he graduated in 1953 with thunderous applause. His graduation and achievement was covered in black newspapers all over the United States.
He continued working in the Galveston and Houston area, focusing on surgery and anesthesiology. In 1968, Dr. Barnett became the first African American to serve on the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.
Due to Barnett's background as a Tuskegee Airman, he participated in airshows while on his way to an airshow in Wichita, Kansas. He unfortunately died in a plane crash, leaving behind quite the legacy as a Tuskegee Airman and the first black graduate of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Over the years, UTMB has grown from a single building to a large complex of six hospitals, four schools, campus and community-based clinics, a Level 1 Trauma Center, a Shriners Burn Hospital, and state-of-the-art research facilities. Students of UTMB are given access to extraordinary educational opportunities, and the school has been a pioneer in the study of infectious diseases.
Its research programs feature state-of-the-art facilities and technology to cover a range of medical needs. However, a sentiment from 1891 still applies. As stated by the Galveston Evening Tribune in 1891, "There is no reason why the school should not draw to itself the flower of Southern youth and become a seed of learning, second to none in the United States.
The money, the people, and the goodwill of all Texas are behind the school."
