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.

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CHESTER R. BURNS, M.D., Ph.D., is the James Wade Rockwell
Professor of Medical History in the Institute for the Medical
Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in
Galveston, where he has taught for thirty-three years. He received a
medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
and a Ph.D. in medical history from the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine. Burns is the author of more than one hundred
publications dealing with the history of health care in Texas, the
history of medical ethics, and the history of humanities education
in medical schools. He was the advisory editor for the health and
medicine entries in the New Handbook of Texas.