Menard House 'Galveston Firsts' Summer Lecture Series: Death and Resurrection of the first Medical Museums in Galveston

History comes alive as the Galveston Historical Foundation presents the Menard House 'Galveston Firsts' Summer Lecture Series.

Galveston Historical Foundation will honor the 175th anniversary of the City of Galveston with special lectures and tours at the historic Menard Campus, 3302 Avenue O. The lectures will take place at 2 p.m. on Sundays June 1, June 22, July 13 and August 3.

In addition, Galveston’s oldest residential dwelling, the 1838 Menard House, will be opened for public tours.

June 22 – Death and Resurrection of the first Medical Museums in Galveston

At the opening of the University of Texas Medical Department in October 1891 there were two museums in “Old Red”, one anatomical the other pathological. The museums were amongst the first in Galveston. They grew to achieve local and national recognition and were praised in Abraham Flexner’s’ report on Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910).

The museums expanded and moved from “Old Red” to the New Laboratory Building in 1925. The museums were open to the general public and highly unusual for the period. Over subsequent decades however the museums fell out of use.

This lecture charts the rise of fall of the museums and describes what remains of the former collections and how they could form the nucleus of a future medical museum.

Presented by Dr. Paula Summerly, Research Project Manager for the John P. McGovern Academy of Oslerian Medicine, and Chair of the “Old Red” Medical Museum Task Force and Heritage Committee at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).  Paula’s academic background is in the history of medicine (PhD, University of Glasgow), paleopathology (MSc, University of Sheffield), and fine art photography (BA, Sheffield Hallam University).

She has held scholarships at the Institute for the Medical Humanities, UTMB, Northwestern University and the Dittrick Medical Museum. Dr. Summerly has researched and curated medical exhibitions for the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow and acted as an exhibition consultant for the Wellcome Trust, London.

About the 1838 Menard House (pictured above)

Built in 1838 by John and Augustus Allen for the founder of Galveston, Michel Branamour Menard, the property passed between Menard and the Allen brothers (founders of Houston) in many complicated dealings in its early years. It is the oldest surviving residential dwelling in Galveston and the only structure to be owned by the founders of both Galveston and Houston.

For more information on the Menard Summer Lecture Series at Menard Hall or public tours of the 1838 Menard House, call Jami Durham at (409)750-9108 or e mail Jami.Durham@galvestonhistory.org.