Raleigh R. White, Jr., M.D.
Temple, Bell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born December 10, 1871, in Tippah County, Mississippi, Raleigh R. White, Jr., was the son of the Rev. Raleigh White, Sr., and Anna Davidson White. The Rev. Mr. White had trained as a physician, but became a Baptist minister who served a number of Texas churches after moving his family to Texas in 1882. Raleigh White, Jr., attended Baylor University and graduated from Tulane University Department of Medicine in 1893 at the age of 21. White practiced medicine in Cameron for about eighteen months before moving to Temple in 1895 when Dr. Arthur C. Scott hired him to serve as house physician at the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Hospital. Doctors Scott and White formed a medical practice partnership, and were named joint Chief Surgeons of the Santa Fe Railway in 1897. Their practice flourished, and in 1904 they established their own hospital named the Temple Sanitarium, now Scott & White Hospital. Dr. White, a gifted business partner and renowned surgeon, developed a treatment for cancer an actively promoted ethical and humane treatment of patients. Active in a number of medical associations, White contributed greatly to medicine in Texas until his early death in 1917 at age 45. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Raleigh R. White, Jr. (1871–1917), the son of a Mississippi minister who had trained as a physician, graduated from Tulane's medical school at just 21. Hired as a railway hospital physician in Temple in 1895, he partnered with Dr. Arthur C. Scott, and in 1904 the two founded the hospital that would become Scott & White. A gifted surgeon who worked on cancer treatment and championed the humane care of patients, White shaped Texas medicine until his early death in 1917.
Why it matters
His partnership launched one of the most important medical institutions in the Southwest, part of the era when American medicine professionalized into modern hospitals.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Raleigh R. White, Jr.
- · Arthur C. Scott
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
George Valter Brindley, Sr., M.D.
Temple, TX
George Valter Brindley, Sr., born on an Ellis County farm in 1886, graduated from the University of Texas medical department at Galveston in 1911 and joined the staff of the Temple Sanitarium that same year. Over a fifty-year career he became a pioneering cancer surgeon and a central figure at what grew into Scott and White Memorial Hospital, lending his name to its foundation. His life mirrors the rise of Central Texas as a regional center of modern medicine.
Arthur Carroll Scott, Sr., M.D.
Temple, TX
A Gainesville-born physician trained at Bellevue, Dr. Arthur C. Scott became chief surgeon of a Temple railroad hospital in 1892 and soon partnered with Dr. Raleigh R. White. In 1904 the two founded the Temple Sanitarium, renamed Scott & White Hospital in 1922, and Scott earned international standing as an authority on diagnosing and treating cancer. In 1933 the institution became the earliest accredited cancer treatment center in Texas, seeding a health system renowned across the Southwest.
Scott & White Hospital
Temple, TX
Temple was born as a railroad town in 1881, and by 1891 the Santa Fe had planted a hospital there to care for its workers. Two surgeons, Arthur C. Scott and Raleigh R. White, joined forces in a private partnership in 1897 and in 1904 opened the Temple Sanitarium, later renamed Scott & White. From those railroad-medicine roots it grew into one of the nation's largest group practices and a hub of medical training and research.
Log Cabin Study of Dr. Arthur Carroll Scott
Temple, TX
Dr. Arthur Carroll Scott, co-founder of the renowned Scott and White Hospital, used this cabin from the 1920s until his death in 1940 as a private study and retreat. Assembled from two old log corn cribs and warmed by a fireplace of stones brought by rock-collecting friends, it stood in an oak grove where a farm bell, not a telephone, summoned him for emergencies. Trained at Bellevue and once chief surgeon for the Santa Fe Railway, Scott helped grow a small 1904 sanitarium into one of the nation's foremost medical centers.