Medicine

TennCare, initiated by Governor Ned Ray McWherter on January 1, 1994, replaced the jointly federal- and state-funded Medicaid program in Tennessee. TennCare's mission was twofold: to cut costs and to expand health care coverage. Twelve statewide managed care organizations (MCOs)…

Tennessee's first anti-narcotic law was largely the work of Dr. Lucius Polk Brown, Tennessee's food and drug commissioner. It went into effect on January 1, 1914, and reflected the moral reform atmosphere of the Progressive era. The law went further…

The movement for an asylum in Tennessee arose in the context of the nationwide reforming furor associated with the Second Great Awakening. The asylum movement in America built its ideological arguments upon the theories of a group of European physicians…

The Tennessee Medical Association (TMA) is a 6,800-member professional organization for medical doctors and doctors of osteopathy dedicated to protecting the health care interests of patients and enhancing the effectiveness of physicians throughout the state. Its headquarters is located in…

The United States Christian Commission, a project of the Young Men's Christian Association, sent almost five thousand volunteers to the battlefields and military hospitals of the Civil War. Their purpose was to care for the spiritual and physical needs of…

Founded in 1911, the UT Health Science Center includes the Colleges of Allied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy; the School of Biomedical Engineering; the Bowld Hospital in Memphis; and the Graduate School of Medicine and…

Fifty-four years after the city-owned and -operated Knoxville General Hospital opened in 1902, it was replaced by the University of Tennessee Memorial Research Center and Hospital. A number of forces converged to bring about the culmination of a nearly twelve-year…

One of the nation's premier academic health centers, Vanderbilt University Medical Center traces its lineage to the University of Nashville and to Shelby Medical College. The latter institution, open only a brief time (1858-61), was established by the Methodist Episcopal…

Before Dr. Emma Rochelle Wheeler opened Walden Hospital in Chattanooga in 1915, African Americans who required medical care were hospitalized in the basements of existing majority hospitals such as Erlanger Hospital or Newell Clinic. Wheeler, a physician who had practiced…

Joseph E. Walker, noted physician, banker, businessman, civic and religious leader in Memphis, was born in the cotton fields near Tillman, Mississippi, in 1880 and rose to become one of the most successful African Americans of his time. Walker overcame…

Western State Mental Hospital, located near Bolivar, was the last state mental hospital to be constructed and habitually the one least funded. In December 1885 the site commissioners chose the farm of Paul T. Jones as the location for the…

May C. Wharton, early twentieth-century medical pioneer on the Cumberland Plateau, was born on a Minnesota farm. A sickly child, she was inspired and encouraged by a family friend and physician who gave her the Home Doctor Book. She attended…

Epidemic diseases caused great concern for nineteenth-century Tennesseans. Subject to outbreaks of cholera, smallpox, and dysentery, people lived with the stark reality of disease-induced death, especially in the growing urban areas where sanitation was often poor. For residents of West…