The Birth of the Texas Medical Center: A Personal Account

Before World War II, Houston was home to many outstanding individual doctors, but no comprehensive, synergistic system existed to focus their collective efforts. Today, the world-renowned Texas Medical Center sprawls across more than 740 acres and receives more than five million patients each year. Its forty member institutions include two medical schools, four schools of nursing, and thirteen hospitals. The determination of a few hardworking individuals such as dentist Frederick C. Elliott breathed life into the dream of a multi-specialty, multi-institutional medical complex. His autobiography, edited by William Henry Kellar, presents an eyewitness account of the founding of the Texas Medical Center. He details the political struggles of finding funding and property for the building of the center as well as conflicts that arose regarding innovative treatments and procedures for inter-institutional cooperation. Elliott provides realistic portraits of the medical men, educators, and businessmen who worked together - and sometimes quarreled - to bring the Medical Center into being. Through the time and vision Elliott and others put into building the Texas Medical Center, doctors found a forum in which to learn from one another and to exchange ideas and techniques that would change the way the art of medicine was taught and practiced. Elliott’s story reveals the human side of a huge and dynamic institution.