^{Denton, A. N.; Bennett, T. J. & Smith, Matthew M. The Texas Medical News, Volume 7, Number 5, March 1898, periodical, March 1898; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1813977/; Texas Medical Association.}

Healthcare is one of Texas’s major industries—contributing more than $108 billion to the state’s GDP, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis—and the history of the medical profession within the state is a long and fascinating one. Visitors to The Portal to Texas History can now explore a bit of that history through the Texas Medical Association Library Collection.

This collection, consisting entirely of medical journals, was provided by the Texas Medical Association after a shift in the TMA physical collections. It contains 1,568 items and spans nine decades from the 1880s to the 1960s; most of them were created between the 1880s and the 1910s.  

About the Texas Medical Association 

In the 1800s, many Texas doctors organized medical societies and associations centered around specific counties and communities. In January of 1853, 35 physicians from 18 counties gathered in Austin, TX to form one such society for the entire state: the Texas Medical Association. Later that year, they changed the name to the Medical Association of Texas… and then promptly went inactive. 

That is, until 1869, when the Washington County Medical Association urged its revival. Since then, the organization has only grown. It renamed itself to the State Medical Association of Texas in 1901 and returned to the original name of the Texas Medical Association in 1951.  

Initially, only regularly-trained white men were permitted to be members, but the organization expanded to allow female doctors in 1893, doctors of color in 1966, and osteopathic physicians in 1972. The twentieth century also saw the growth of the TMA Alliance, a partner group originally called the Women’s Auxiliary of the Texas Medical Association. 

^{Denton, A. N.; Bennett, T. J. & Smith, Matthew M. The Texas Medical News, Volume 7, Number 5, March 1898, periodical, March 1898; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1813977/; Texas Medical Association.}

It was formed during World War I by the wives of the members, and in this present day is a powerful community organization that performs service projects and undertakes political advocacy on behalf of the TMA. The Texas Medical Association advocates for doctors and patients. They encourage postgraduate education, campaign for effective medical practice legislation, and fight to uphold the integrity of the profession. You can read more about the history of the TMA in this article by the Texas State Historical Association.

^{Daniel, Mrs. F. E. Texas Medical Journal, Volume 30, Number 2, August 1914, periodical, August 1914; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1838433/; Texas Medical Association.}

About the Collection

Most of the journals within this collection were issued monthly to physicians across the state. The majority of issues come from the Texas State Journal of Medicine (renamed to Texas Medicine in 1966), the “official organ” of the Texas Medical Association. However, this title wasn’t established until 1905; before then, in the 1880s and 1890s, Daniel’s Texas Medical Journal (later renamed to just the Texas Medical Journal), owned and edited by former Confederate surgeon Ferdinand E. Daniel, served as the organization’s unofficial publication. This collection contains many other serial titles as well—14 at this time—most of which were independently owned and operated.

_{Daniel, F. E. Texas Medical Journal, Volume 21, Number 10, April 1906, periodical, April 1906; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1820697/; Texas Medical Association.}

 Overall, this collection provides insight into what the medical field was like over a hundred years ago. There are articles addressing the early-1900s epidemic of pellagra—a disease caused by a nutritional deficiency of niacin (vitamin 83) which, nowadays, is virtually eliminated from the United States. There are advertisements for medicinal arsenic and something called an “inhalatorium cabinet.” There are articles about surgeries that are routine now but were new and risky back then. But there are also more unfortunate aspects of Texas history—for instance, F. E. Daniel was a notable proponent of the eugenics movement, even including a “Eugenics Section” in the Texas Medical Journal for a time.