TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | m a y 7, 2 0 1 4 8 The trustees learned of a 134-acre piece of property owned by the City of Houston, just south of Hermann Hospital. William Hogg, son of Texas Governor Jim Hogg and a University of Texas regent as well as a developer of River Oaks in Houston, was selling the land back to the city. Despite repeated attempts, Hogg had been unable to get The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston to move to Houston and build adjacent to Rice University and Hermann Hospital. Three miles from Houston's down- town, the site, 134 acres of mosquito- infested forest, was considered too far outside of Houston to be valuable to the University of Texas. The trustees of M.D. Anderson's foundation, however, realized that it was "the logical place to build a medical center." Hermann Hospital, which opened in 1925, was on the northern bounds of the site and the then Rice Institute, now Rice University, was only a short distance away; both institutions were well positioned to benefit the medical center. The trustees moved quickly and decisively. On November 6, 1943, the MD Anderson Foundation and the City of Houston reached an agreement for the purchase of precisely 134.36 acres of land located south and east of Hermann Hospital for use as a med- ical center. A full page ad in The Houston Post urged Houstonians to vote the next day and support the idea to develop a medical complex. Voter approval was necessary because the site was designated as city park land. Fortunately, Rainey's announcements the previous year had excited great civic interest in the community. The sale was approved by the people of Houston on December 14, 1943. While plans for the cancer hos- pital and the Texas Dental College affiliation with the University of Texas were being developed, trustees of the then Baylor University College of Medicine, then located in Dallas, approached the Anderson trustees with a proposal that the college be moved to Houston and incorporated into plans for the medical center. In May of 1943, Baylor University College of Medicine received an offer from the MD Anderson Foundation for both land and startup funding. Baylor emerged in the center of the Texas Medical Center forest while, simultaneously, construc- tion on MD Anderson began. The dream was taking shape, slowly forming the familiar landscape of the Texas Medical Center. On November 1, 1945, just one month after Japan sur- rendered to formally end World War II, the Texas Medical Center was chartered under the laws of the State of Texas as a non-profit corporation. "Other than the agreements restricting the use of the land to non-profit use in medical care, teaching and research, there were no strings attached," said Freeman. "Every one of the institutions was absolutely autonomous and still is." In the 1950s, The Methodist Hospital, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, and Texas Children's Hospital all broke ground. Their success served as a catalyst, driving others to join the Texas Medical Center's community of non- profit health care institutions. By 1954, Texas Medical Center corporate offices were created to oversee land distribu- tion and develop the common areas for the new medical city. The Texas Medical Center, with its charter registered, began making gifts of land from its original property. The MD Anderson Foundation was able to contribute substantial funds for building programs to the recipients of the land. Since 1945, the Texas Medical Center has gifted or leased more than 113 acres at almost no cost to various member institutions. "I think Mr. Anderson, if he saw this medical center today, would say, 'I see it out there, but I don't believe it,'" said Freeman in 1973. "It's all there, and you can reach out and touch it. It's real." Today, the Texas Medical Center has 54 member institutions, composed of 27 government agencies and 27 not- for-profit health care facilities. This past year, 7.1 million patients visited institutions within the Texas Medical Center. The mission of the Texas Medical Center, and its member institu- tions, has always focused on providing the best in not-for profit health care for patients, the best in academic training for health professionals at all levels, and support of medical research. National recognition was generated, in large part, as a result of the incredible work that has come out of the Texas Medical Center through the decades. Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., a young doctor from Louisiana, performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy in 1953, establishing the field of surgery for strokes. William Spencer, M.D., often thought of as "The Father of Modern Rehabilitation," was renowned for establishing one of the first polio treatment centers in the nation and the institute he founded, The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research, created a Spinal Cord Injury Program that became the model for the nation's disability centers. Founded in 1976 by James "Red" Duke, M.D., Memorial Hermann Life Flight operates around the clock—weather permitting— 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. Since its inaugural flight, Memorial Hermann Life Flight has flown more than 120,000 missions. (Credit: Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center) Since Life Flight has been in service, the program has covered over 1,900,000 miles. In its first 39 years of existence, the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center has collected more than 8,000,000 units of blood. In 1935, Dr. James Greenwood Jr. performed the at Houston Methodist Hospital. tumor surgery in Houston 1 st brain The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston helped construct the in the state of Texas in 1896. machine 1 st X-ray Hermann Hospital was the to open in what would later become the Texas Medical Center. It opened with in its first year. 1 st hospital 100 beds, 558 inpatients and treated 109 physicians,

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