The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949 Page: 244

Hoo Reviews
RUDOLPH L. BIESELE, Editor
The Medical Story of Early Texas, 1528-1853. By Pat Ireland
Nixon, M. D. San Antonio (Mollie Bennett Lupe Memorial
Fund), 1946. Pp. xv+507. Illustrations. $6.oo; de luxe edi-
tion, $10o.
It is a gratifying contemplation that others than those who by
profession are historians write history. Not only historians, but
the general reader as well, must praise these other writers who
have found a love for history so great that they essay the role of
historical writers. Pat Ireland Nixon of San Antonio, Texas, the
author of the book here under review, is a doctor of medicine
by profession and through an abiding and abounding interest a
student and writer of history by avocation. Several years back
Dr. Nixon published A Century of Medicine in San Antonio,
and his interest in the medical history of Texas is, according to
Dr. Chauncey D. Leake's foreword, to produce three other books
which will bring the story up to the present time.
In the heading of this review a new publishing fund is men-
tioned. This fund is a memorial to Mollie Bennett Lupe, the
daughter of John and Jamie Bennett. May it be said after this
fund has been used a number of years that, like the one in whose
memory it was created, it "touched many things and many peo-
ple" (p. v). With this book a splendid beginning has been made
to achieve this aim. It is a highly commendable spirit that im-
pelled the donors of this fund to establish it, and the hope of
this reviewer is that other publication funds may be established
in Texas.
In explanation of the date limits of his book the author re-
minds the reader that in 1528 Cabeza de Vaca was the first white
doctor not only in Texas but in the whole western hemisphere
to give medical treatment to the Indians. In 1853 the Texas
Medical Association, "this signpost of medical progress in Texas,"
was established. Between these dates, 325 years apart, the author
found many doctors and many topics for discussion. He acquitted