The Texas Medical Center (TMC) is a comprehensive medical community located south of downtown Houston. It comprises 54 institutions, including four medical and seven nursing schools, 21 hospitals, three level-I trauma centers, 8 specialty institutions, and academic and research institutions for many other health-related disciplines. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is among the top-ranked cancer hospitals in the country. As of 2017, it is one of the largest medical centers in the world.
TMC was proposed by Horace Wilkins, Col. William Bates, and John H. Freeman, the trustees of the M.D. Anderson Foundation. Established by cotton magnate Monroe Dunaway Anderson in 1936, the Foundation supported a variety of small causes until Anderson’s death in 1939, at which point the trustees, with the encouragement of Ernst Bertner, M.D., and Frederick Elliott, D.D.S., decided the funds should be used to build a medical center on par with Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic.
TMC grew quickly and has provided a home for innovators such as heart surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley; William Spencer and his work on rehabilitation of paralysis patients; trauma surgeon and medevac pioneer James “Red” Duke; and Nobel Prize-winning pharmacology researcher Ferid Murad. Learn more from Texas Medical Center Photograph Collection,
Find out more from McGovern Historical Center at The TMC Library, or contact an archivist at 713-799-7145, 713-799-7165 or mcgovern@library.tmc.edu
Browse the History of the Texas Medical Center Collections:
Historical A/V from the TMC: 1973-1991
John P. McGovern Museum of Health and Medical Science: 1900-2009