Dr. Jacob Tally Wilhite
Creedmoor, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(April 3, 1875 - January 27, 1927) Born on a farm near this site, Jacob Tally Wilhite received his early education in the public schools of the Willow Springs community. He attended the University of Texas in Austin and taught school in Bastrop County before continuing his studies at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Wilhite earned his medical degree in 1903 and served an internship at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston. That same year, he became assistant to the director of the State Lunatic Asylum (now Austin State Hospital). During his tenure there, he began studying rabies and its treatment. The State Legislature appropriated funds for his research in 1904 and Wilhite became director of the new institution, called the Pasteur Institute of Austin, in 1905. Wilhite's research soon led him to the discovery of a stain to detect rabies in body tissue. He became a leading authority on the disease and was known throughout the world. In 1927 the State Legislature again appropriated funds for the Pasteur Institute for the construction of a new facility at 5th and Trinity streets. Dr. Wilhite contracted influenza and died before its completion, and the building was dedicated in his honor. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born on a nearby farm in 1875, Jacob Tally Wilhite rose from the Willow Springs schoolhouse to the University of Texas and its Galveston medical branch, earning his degree in 1903. Assigned to the state asylum in Austin, he turned to the terrifying problem of rabies, and in 1905 became director of the newly founded Pasteur Institute of Austin. His development of a tissue stain to detect the disease made him a world authority before influenza took his life in 1927.
Why it matters
Wilhite's work placed a small Texas institution at the frontier of turn-of-the-century public health, part of the broader American embrace of Pasteur's science to conquer once-hopeless diseases.
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Related people
- · Jacob Tally Wilhite
Related events
- · Founding of the Pasteur Institute of Austin
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