The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949 Page: 245
512 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
himself nobly of the challenge which confronted him and re-
moved many a Texas doctor from the "iniquity of oblivion."
Dr. Nixon has divided his story into seven parts and a total
of twenty-six chapters. Part I covers Indian medicine in Texas
with one chapter. Part II deals with the Spanish period from
1528 to 1821 in five chapters. The seventh chapter serves the
purpose of Part III in dealing with the French period and dis-
cusses the two French surgeons, Liotot and Jalot. The first was
one of the assassins of La Salle (p. 112); the second was the
eccentric surgeon who accompanied St. Denis from Louisiana
across Texas to Mexico and was heavily mixed up in St. Denis'
escapade to win the love of Dofia Maria, the daughter of Captain
Diego Ram6n at San Juan Bautista on the Rio Grande. Jalot
was "a passionate lover of his art, and .. never was seen in a
good humor except when he was tending a wound" (p. 114).
Part IV covers the Mexican period in Texas from 1821 to 1836
with four chapters, lists five doctors and Maria de los Reyes Mar-
tinez, "a native curandera," and enumerates smallpox, cholera,
malaria, measles, respiratory and kindred affections, pneumonia,
asthma, and obscure fevers among the diseases. "Cutting affrays
... [were among] the usual run of ailments of this period"
(p. 140). In Part V on the Texas Revolution, 1832-1836, the
author uses five chapters, in one of which he writes a very illu-
minating account on the part played by doctors, of whom he lists
fifteen. Part VI with eight chapters and 178 pages is the largest
division of the book and covers the period from 1836 to 1845
while Texas was a republic. In this section the chapter on physi-
cians is the longest in the book with its seventy-one pages and
listing of forty-six physicians, forty-three of them by name and
the others as Drs. A, B, and K. Of hospitals there seem to have
been only three in the days of the Republic, but the author
mentions at least nine others in the days of statehood, the ma-
jority being located at army posts on the frontier. In Part VII
the author closes his story with a chapter on the beginnings of
organized medicine in Texas and another on the State Medical
Association of Texas. Finally, there are two appendices in the
reading matter of this book.
The bibliography of fifteen pages indicates the extensive re-245
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949, periodical, 1949; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101121/m1/254/?rotate=90: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.