Tucked away in a corner of the University of Texas Medical Branch campus stands a majestic relic of an era long past. Constructed of red pressed brick, sandstone, and ruddy Texas granite, the Ashbel Smith Building, fondly known as Old Red, represents a fascinating page in Galveston and Texas history. It has been more than a century since Old Red welcomed the first group of visionary faculty and students inside its halls. For decades, the medical school building existed at the heart of UTMB campus life, even through periods of dramatic growth and change. In time, however, the building lost much of its original function to larger, more contemporary facilities. Today, as the oldest medical school building west of the Mississippi River, the intricately ornate Old Red sits in sharp contrast to its sleeker neighbors.

"Old Red: Pioneering Medical Education in Texas "examines the life and legacy of the Ashbel Smith Building from its beginnings through modern-day efforts to preserve it. Chapters explore the nascence of medical education in Texas; the supreme talent and genius of Old Red architect, Nicholas J. Clayton; and the lives of faculty and students as they labored and learned in the midst of budget crises, classroom and fraternity antics, death-rendering storms, and threats of closure. The education of the state's first professional female and minority physicians and the nationally acclaimed work of physician-scientists and researchers are also highlighted. Most of all, the reader is invited to step inside Old Red and mingle with ghosts of the past--to ascend the magnificent cedar staircase, wander the long, paneled hallways, and take a seat in the tiered amphitheater as pigeons fly in and out of windows overhead.

The silent scourge that held a generation in fear . . . From the 1930s to the 1950s, paralytic poliomyelitis ("polio") threatened the lives of children and adults in Texas, arousing the same kind of fear more recently associated with AIDS and other dread diseases. Harris County had the second-highest rate of infection in the nation, and the rest of the Texas Gulf Coast was particularly hard-hit by this debilitating illness. At the time, though little was known at first, the medical responses to polio changed the medical landscape forever, giving rise to the development of rehabilitative therapies, the modern intensive care unit, and a wave of discoveries in virology that transformed the field. Polio also had a sweeping cultural and societal effect. In addition to engendering fearful responses from parents trying to keep children safe from its ravages and an all-out public information blitz aimed at helping a frightened population protect itself, polio exacted a very real toll on the families, friends, healthcare resources, and social fabric of those who contracted the disease and endured its acute, convalescent, and rehabilitation phases. In The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown, Heather Green Wooten draws on extensive archival research as well as interviews conducted over a five-year period with Texas polio survivors and their families. The picture that emerges is a detailed and intensely human account, not only of the epidemics that swept Texas during the polio years, but also of the continuing aftermath of the disease for those who are still living with its effects. Interested general readers, public health and medical professionals, and historians will derive deep and lasting benefits from reading The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown. Heather Green Wooten earned her PhD in medical humanities from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. She is an educator and independent historian living in League City, Texas.