Excerpts from The Official History of Chiropractic in Texas
By Dr. Walter R. Rhodes
Published by Texas Chiropractic Association, 303 International Life Building, Austin, TX 78701.As authorized by the various Boards of Directors of the Texas Chiropractic Association from 1958 to 1977, the idea first being presented to the board by E. L. Bauknight in 1958.
These excerpts are presented for educational purposes.
The Texas Chiropractic College was established in September, 1908 in downtown San Antonio by Dr. J. N. Stone, M.D., D.C.[1] who was probably a very recent graduate of the Carver Chiropractic College, or possibly of the Palmer School of Chiropractic. Its first graduate was Dr. A. R. Luttrell, also a medical doctor.
The exact street number location of the first school offices remains unknown,[2] but according to Dr. John Lege, it was on West Commerce, which was the location of the School from 1908 until September, 1919, when the facilities were moved to the Free Press for Texas Building on E. Commerce St., Across from the department store, Joske’s of Texas.[3]
On April 16, 1913, the school was chartered by the State of Texas and soon thereafter issued its first catalogue, which indicated the school had been offering a 12 month course of study since its inception.[4]
The ownership of the school was taken over by Dr. J. M. McLease and Associates in September, 1918. Dr. B. F. Gurden bought the school from McLease, then on March 13, 1920, the school’s charter was purchased by Dr. B. F. Gurden, his wife, Dr. Flora Gurden and Dr. James R. Drain. Dr. H. E. (Buddy) Weiser entered the school’s affairs on January 1, 1921, as the newest faculty member.
In 1920-21, just before the charter purchase, in that interval of time when Dr. B. F. Gurden owned the school alone, the old Yoakum home on the corner of Dwyer and Nueva Streets was purchased as the site for the college. It was later to be sold for $60,000 which left a tidy $15,000 profit to expand facilities in another location.
A large, old, but very substantial San Antonio home on King William St. was purchased for the college. Dr. Weiser and Dr. Bill Allen, now of San Angelo, moved into it prior to remodeling because the insurance company demanded it be occupied or the fire insurance rates would become excessive.
Dr. Weiser relates that hindsight reveals the poor judgment on his and Dr. Allen’s part when they purchased a mattress from a store specializing in previously owned merchandise, it being heavily populated with small creatures, so they could stay there to keep the insurance rates down.
This old home was never officially moved into as the college because the vacant lots on Myrtle St. across from the 50 acre San Pedro Park, were bought with the $15,000 surplus and the equity from the place on King William St.
The original buildings on Myrtle St. were soon built on that location and during the Thanksgiving vacation, 1926, Texas Chiropractic College moved from the corner of Dwyer and Nueva Streets. It was not to move again until the 1960s when the college was moved to Pasadena, Texas, its present location.
In October, 1924, most of the interest in the school held by the Drs. Gurden was acquired by Dr. H. E. Weiser, who would become the dean and business manager, and Dr. C. G. Loftin. Dr. J. R. Drain retained his interest.
For an uncertain period of time Dr. C. W. Weiant and Dr. C. C. (Chick) Evans held an interest in the school but their part was eventually purchased by the Drain-Lofting-Weiser trio – and this brought together the three private owners who retained the school’s ownership until it was sold to the alumni association for $225,000.00 in 1948.
Weiner recalled that Dr. P. D. Brown, M. D. taught anatomy and dissection at the school. until he decided to quit one Friday. Weiner replaced him on the following Monday and the strain of his new position and heavy responsibilities on the faculty ultimately caused him to develop ulcers and require hospitalization in 1925. The school prospered and did very well until 1929. Dr. Brown’s departure also ended the dissection studies at Texas Chiropractic College because he was the one who secured the cadavers from local undertakers.
When the Wall Street financial crash came the school was soon in desperate straits, as were many other businesses, both personal and corporate. The trio of owners went into a period of mutual sacrifice to hold things together but the times were very rough.
Dr. C. B. Loftin lost his home on Fulton Avenue. It was repossessed because he couldn’t make the payments. Dr. J. R. Drain also lost his home. Dr. Weiser got his house payments cut to $10.00 per month by the Federal Housing Authority and was barely able to make those payments, even with his wife working as stenographer and clerk for Camp Normoyle. But they managed somehow to keep the school alive.
There was one year in the 1920s that only one student graduated. Dr. Jim Stowe of El Paso. The school averaged only 60-70 students per year in the best of the good times before World War II. Two doctors were graduated who were too young to receive their diplomas at time of graduation, Dr. Ed Hogan and Dr. Harvey Watkins.
When the school was in the building on Dwyer and Nueva Streets (1922) patients had to be sent to Dr. B. F. Gurden’s office for x-rays. He used one of the very early machines with a gas x-ray tube. The x-ray department was soon put in the school under the supervision of Dr. Weiser about 1923.
Dr. Harvey W. Watkins was another innovator for x-ray. From 1923, until an unfortunate incident gave him an overdose of x-rays at Falfurrias in 1929, Watkins traveled widely teaching and demonstrating the use of x-rays and their interpretation in the chiropractic practice.
Things went from bad to only a little better until the G. I. Bill program finally came into effect as an aftermath of World War II, and the school finally began to grow again, reaching a peak of just under 500 students. Several buildings were added to the original space. A mobile home lot was added, the hamburger hut established and additional office space and classrooms were acquired with the purchase of the apartment house on Park Avenue, just behind the school.
Private ownership of a professional school had been a sore spot for Texas’ chiropractors for some time. A groundswell of support for the school to be purchased by the alumni association began several years prior to 1948, when the actual purchase was consummated.
That sale and its terms brought controversy that raged periodically for several years. With the passage of time virtually all parties have finally agreed that the sale and its terms served the best interests of the former owners as well as that of the alumni association, but it took time for that fact to be appreciated.
The disagreements centered around the purchase of the school at the end of World War II when enrollment was at an inflated peak with several classes having more than 100 enrollment, and the selling price of $225,000.00 was thought to be excessive by many.
But that was only one point. Another was that the former owners were hired to manage the school at the same salary they had been receiving as owners and those salaries, of up to $2,000.00 per month, were definitely inflated if one considered only their current managerial worth but Drs. Weiser, Loftin and Drain kept remembering losing homes, pouring personal money back into the school, the years of one, two and three graduates, and other sacrifices they made to enable the school to survive.
They felt the salaries were only a reasonable return on investments made and saw no need for apologies – frankly thinking more in terms of the ingratitude being shown them by an alumni, which alumni itself their labors alone made possible.
These particular things were well known in 1948 but much less publicized were later occasions when the school was hard pressed financially and the former owners, now bondholders, occasionally donated back to the alumni association bonds currently due. In addition to these occasional donations the last $50,000.00 of the school’s debt to the former owners was donated to the association.
The school was cursed by the “chick and feathers” syndrome, a condition where the finances are excellent for a while and chicken is served for lunch, then followed by a period of financial disaster when the only affordable things for dinner are the feathers left over from the previous feast.
The school was always adequate for the job at hand but it was never a gleaming marble edifice with polished statues, and overstocked, over endowed laboratory facilities. The instructors were chiropractors, not educators in other fields. This was pointed out as a liability many times over the years by the medical profession in their periodic attacks on the chiropractors. But they seldom mentioned that their happy circumstance, [unlike chiropractic’s] was bought largely with public tax money lavished on them and their institutions every time the congress convened in Washington or the legislature met in Austin.
By contrast the chiropractors did it all themselves, using their own time, their own money, and their own sweat, without one cent of tax money being granted by any government agency to upgrade education, improve facilities, conduct research or encourage higher instructor qualifications.
Nevertheless the educational standards at Texas Chiropractic College kept climbing steadily upward. Prior to 1915 a six month course was not uncommon in many chiropractic colleges; then most of the schools began to require 1 year or 2 years for the D. C. degree with another six months required for the Ph.C. degree. TCC, however, was known to have begun the one year requirement since its inception in 1908.
On March 10, 1927, Dr. H. E. Turley came to Texas Chiropractic College as an instructor. In his 38 years and 6 months with the college he saw many changes, but even when he came the standards were already 3 years of 8 months each required for graduation. By the 1940s the requirements were 4 years of 9 months each.
The basic science law passed in 1949 added two years of college outside of chiropractic college and specified the subjects required under its provisions as an anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, public health and hygiene, chemistry and other basic sciences. It effectively added to the educational standards but that was never its intent, which was to eliminate chiropractors from licensure.
The veterans returning from World War II and attending under the G. I. Bill also added to the problem because the G. I. Bill required upgrading certain standards, especially concerning the faculty. When the profitable influx of veterans slowed down, the expensive requirements remained. This was credited by Dr. Lorna Langmore of Oklahoma City, long associated with the college there, with being one of the greatest factors in the demise of the Carver Chiropractic College in Oklahoma City.
Students planning on entering colleges and choosing their lifelong careers would look around and see the tremendously high educational requirements placed on chiropractors, yet the income, the prestige and the public acceptance were disproportionately low, probably the lowest of all the professions at the time. The sacrifices continued, being transferred from owners to students, and the resistance from the medical profession continued, only on a different front.
But the chiropractic licensing boards in the various states were steadily raising their requirements for licensure and the schools hurried to meet their demands also. The pressures came from within and without.
It also is interesting to note that tax dollars were denied the colleges due to medical opposition, which they then used as evidence of inferiority – a classic case of profiting from one’s own injustice. But the wheels of justice grind slowly and exceedingly fine, as will be evidenced shortly.
The Texas Chiropractic College was successfully sued for $2,000.00 in Federal Court by Dr. Vinton Logan, the originator of the Basic Adjusting Technique, after Dr. John Craven, formerly on the faculty of the Palmer College in Davenport, Iowa, taught the technique at Texas Chiropractic College as part of a post graduate course. The judgment was paid by donations from local doctors who pitched in to save the day after Dr. Bill Bremer from Bandera contacted Logan and unsuccessfully asked that the suit be dropped. Dr. F. L. Charlton of Austin gave a large sum and was remembered as the largest contributor.
The school was closed once due to a smallpox quarantine because of spots on Florence Bremley, the secretary.
Dr. J. R. Drain called it a misdiagnosis and stayed at the school, which error was later agreed to by a judge who lifted the quarantine as Ms. Bremley’s spots diminished, although the county health officer never accepted that he had ever made any misdiagnoses, especially that one.
At the time the building was in the process of being padlocked one “mystery man” fled out the back door and was seen but not recognized. The local radio station made announcements all evening trying to locate him. But Dr. H. O. Green, recognizing the foolishness of the whole affair, refused to dance to the county health officer’s tune and took a couple of well deserved days off work.
Green remembered his years as an instructor there with a wistful nostalgia. His graduation class, in 1926, had 40 students including one medical doctor and one optometrist, and it was the second largest class until the World War II years. After his graduation he went into practice in Bay City with Dr. D. A. Einkoff, then back to Texas Chiropractic College as instructor from 1927 to 1930 when he was let go because the school was in such dire financial straits. Times were so bad in San Antonio that $5.00 would get you all the adjustments you wanted for a whole month.
He eventually settled in Bonham where one of his acquaintances was Sam Rayburn, soon to become the Speaker of the House, and one of the most influential statesmen in the world.
The school entered another era in 1948 when it was purchased by the Alumni Association. Dr. T. A. Baker was the association president that year, to be followed by Dr. H. E. Turley.
Dr. E. B. Hearn took over leadership of the school.
Dr. Julius Troilo was hired in September 1951, first as dean and later as chief administrator, and it was he who pioneered the union between the San Antonio Junior College and the Texas Chiropractic College. Dr. William D. Harper, Jr., holder of a master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Texas Chiropractic College graduate, was elected to the dean’s position in September 1963. With these installations all things at the college began to change and the modern period began.
Some special mention must be made of the great talents of persuasion possessed by Drs. B. F. Gurden and J. R. Drain. They are uniformly described by those men who knew them as dynamic, exciting and forceful in all their ways.
Other men who deserve tribute on behalf of the school and its survival in the lean years were Dr. Hugh Warren, Dr. C. W. Weiant, Dr. George Rogers, Dr. T. S. Holms, Dr. Luke Lowery and Dr. J. M. Russell, the chairman of the Board of Regents. Dr. Lee Griffin, Dr. E. A. Dann, and Dr. W. R. H. Davis, also deserve special credits from the school’s history department.
Editor’s Notes:
- An early business card identifies him as J. N. Stone D.C., M.T., D.O., PsC, M.S.
- The first location has now been identified as The Central Office Building the name of a building at the corner of College and Navarro Streets in San Antonio. Stone’s office was in the Conroy Building near the corner of Alamo Plaza and E. Crockett Street.
- This West Commerce address is not the first location of the school. The school moved from its first location in The Central Office Building to a W. Commerce address near the current intersection of E. Commerce and N. St. Mary’s Street. It moved from this location to a Drwyer Street location at the intersection of E. Nueva, where it remained until 1928.
- The TMA notes the first charter was issued in 1910. The 1913 charter was secured by Lutrell.