National Library Week: P.I. Nixon Library
In honor of National Library Week falling in April, we are celebrating the P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library.
On the 5th Floor of the Briscoe Library, just to the right of the elevators, is one of the university’s hidden treasures. Many visitors miss it on their way to the study areas but through the doors is a robust history of medicine collection as well as the University Archives.
The P.I. Nixon collection primarily focuses on the history of medicine, collecting texts, instruments, and journals. The core collection was donated by the Bexar County Medical Society in the 1970s but has since been expanded to include notable original works such as:
- De Humani Corporis Fabria, 1553 – Andreas Vesalius
- The Canon of Medicine, 1486 – Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
- The Micrographia, 1667 – Robert Hooke
- George Cupples (1815-1895) casebooks – Handwritten casebooks of patient notes and case reports from 1853 to 1867 detailing medical life in South Texas. Dr. Cupples is believed to be the first physician in Texas to use anesthesia. The cases cover the period from 1853 to 1867.
Non-book items include an antique cupping set, a Civil War era amputation set, and a set of trepanning drills.
The Nixon Library also houses the University Archives, a repository for the preservation of historically significant records that document the history of UT Health San Antonio. The archives include photographs, books, yearbooks, newspaper clippings, videos, oral histories, original blueprints, and more. A few of the notable collections include:
- The HSC News – Since 1968, this newsletter has chronicled the life of our institution – documenting its growth, spotlighting its people, and preserving its history one issue at a time.
- Founding Faculty Interviews – Video history interviews with the Health Science Center’s Founding Faculty.
A Brief History
The Nixon takes its name from Pat Ireland (P.I.) Nixon, a San Antonio physician. Born in 1883, Nixon received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins in 1909. He returned to San Antonio in 1911 where he opened a practice and treated patients for over 50 years.
Nixon served on the Bexar County Medical Association and the San Antonio Board of Health. He advocated for public health measures to help curb the spread of polio, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases in San Antonio.
Nixon was also a collector of rare books, acquiring over 15,000 volumes during his lifetime. After his death in 1965 his collection was donated to UT Health San Antonio in 1970, where it became the P.I. Nixon Historical Library.
Joyce Ray, Ph.D., served as the Nixon’s first Archivist and Special Collections Librarian. Ray holds a Master of Library Science from UT Austin and worked at UT Health from 1977 – 1987. During that time, she was responsible for the creation of the Special Collections and Archives program.
Currently, Joyce Ray is an Assistant Program Director and Senior Lecturer for the MA in Museum Studies and the Graduate Certificate in Digital Curation programs at John Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts & Sciences.
The current University Archivist is Diane Fotinos, who has served in that position since 2016. She oversees the continual development, organization, and growth of the collections, with help from Archives Associate Mellisa DeThorne.
Diane says of her love for archives: “I’ve always been drawn to the stories that live in the margins—hidden in boxes, filed away in folders, waiting to be found. Working in archives lets me connect with the past in a meaningful way while helping others do the same.”
If you’d like to schedule a tour or view one of our rare books, reach out to University Archives and Special Collection at specialcollections@uthscsa.edu.
Contributed by Kelley Minars, Resource Sharing Librarian, with Supplementary Material provided by Diane Fotinos, University Archivist, and Mellisa DeThorne, Archives Associate.