Texas Surgeon: an Autobiography Page: ix
xii, 180 p. ; 21 cm.View a full description of this book.
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Mainly Introductory
I am a surgeon with offices on the eighth floor of the Medical
Arts Building in downtown San Antonio, Texas, my field the eye
and its diseases. In recent years, it has become my habit, after
hours of consultation and work in the operating room, to sit
quietly at my desk, sip a cup of tea, and look from my window
at the busy streets below. Invariably my eye is drawn from the
flow of pedestrians and traffic to a one-story building in the old
Spanish style, set in a park and facing a plaza in which a cenotaph
in surgery white marble steals the scene. This monument, I fear,
is only too obviously commemorative. And so I ignore it, in order
to consider the less pretentious structure.
This is the chapel of what was once the Franciscan Mission San
Antonio de Valero. It is all that is left of what was originally a
much larger establishment, with dormitories and a cloister inside
a walled yard covering two-and-one-half acres. Today the chapel
is much better known as the Alamo, named, according to some
people, after the cottonwood that once grew beside it, and to
others, after the Mexican town of Alamo del Parras from which
Spanish troops long ago came to garrison this city. In any case,
"Alamo" means poplar, and in this context cottonwood.
Countless times, in the white glare of noonday or in the soft
blue Texas night, this historic chapel has moved me to reverie. I
am reminded that around the turn of the century I began my
ix
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Atkinson, Donald Taylor. Texas Surgeon: an Autobiography, book, 1958; New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth143566/m1/9/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.