Prehistory (prior to 1540) Native American rock carvings near Tucson seem to show amputations. The carvings date from the 1400s.

Spanish Period (1540-1821) Mexico City boasts the first medical school in the Americas (c. 1640) and Spanish military physicians probably traveled to the dangerous northern frontier that included Southern Arizona. Priests introduce common herbal remedies to Native Americans.

Mexican Period (1821-1856) There may have been 1,000 non-native people in Arizona in 1821, but Apache raids quickly reduced the population to fewer than 600. There were three physicians, serving 200,000 people, in all of Sonora. None worked in Arizona.

1846 The first Anglo physician, acting as a physician and not an explorer or trapper, enters Southern Arizona with the US Army during the Mexican American War.

1857 Dr. Bernard J.D. Irwin arrives at Fort Buchanan, near present-day Sonoita. An excellent physician, he performed the first recorded surgery in Arizona. His bird collection is still held by the Smithsonian. He often led troops into battle and won the Medal of Honor at Apache Pass in 1861. Irwin invented the tent hospital at Shiloh during the Civil War.

1870 Harvard-educated Dr. R.A. Wilbur vaccinates the Papago tribe against smallpox, a scourge that haunted the tribe since first contact with Europeans.

1871 Dr. John Handy, a well trained military physician, is lured to Tucson by the promise of $25 per year from several prominent families. He stays until he is killed during an 1891 gunfight with a lawyer.

1873 Tucson’s first hospital is founded by the military at Camp Lowell in downtown Tucson.
1878 Mariano Samaniego MD calls for a county medical society and community hospital. He leaves Tucson after his nephew is killed by a stray bullet, both dreams unfulfilled. Walter Reed MD practices at Fort Lowell.

1880 St. Mary’s Hospital, Arizona’s oldest continuously operated hospital, opens.

1886 H.H. Pilling arrives as Tucson’s first homeopathic physician. He practices until 1914.

1891-1898 Innovative physician George Goodfellow MD practices in Tucson.

1897 A little over a year after being discovered, x-ray machines are being used.

1899 H.W. Fenner MD drives Arizona’s first automobile on the streets of Tucson.

1900 Two osteopathic physicians arrive. The second, George W. Martin DO, practices until 1944.

1902 James Coleman MD delivers a paper on the use of Echinacea to fight infection. The famous St. Mary’s Round Building opens to treat TB patients with fresh air, bed rest and good food.

1903 Arizona begins current scheme of licensing physicians. Holding Pima County’s first license (#5 for the state) is a woman physician, Rosa Goodrich Boido MD, educated at what became the medical school at Stanford.

1904 With the new American Medical Association reorganization in place, Pima County Medical Society is founded Oct. 13.

1909 The state’s first medical lab opens at the University of Arizona.

1910 Dr. Walter Purcell, winner of the 1907 Desert Race from Los Angeles, becomes one of the first physicians in America to die in a car accident.

1919 With the Great War and the flu pandemic behind, Drs. Charles Thomas and Stirley Davis form a partnership that leads to one of the nation’s first multi-specialty clinics.

1920 Health-seeking veterans get a Public Health Hospital at Pastime Park. Within eight years the VA Hospital opens.

1922 Tucson’s first urologist, William Shultz MD, comes to town. His son, Lee, also a urologist is still in practice. Tucson’s first pathologist, Philip Newcomb MD, arrives about the same time.

1926 Desert Sanitorium opens and begins heliotherapy for TB. In 1944 it becomes Tucson Medical Center.

1929 The nation’s first city/county health department opens in Tucson with local physician and Ford Foundation help.

1936 Tucson’s first orthopedic surgeon, Robert Hastings, Sr., MD, starts work in Tucson. The county hospital is built on S. Sixth Avenue. Local physicians staff it for free.

1937 Dr. O.J. Farness discovers Valley Fever is endemic to Tucson.

World War II Young physicians are called to active duty and pioneer physicians, who began practice early in the century, come out of retirement. Military physicians from around the country spread the word about how beautiful Tucson is. Antibiotics are experimented with at St. Mary’s by 1945.

1946 Holbrook/Hill Clinic opens in Tucson and publishes several breakthrough works about drugs and arthritis. The clinic is so swamped with patients that soon the precursor to the National Arthritis Foundation is begun in Tucson.

1950s Tucson grows from town to city and the number of physicians grows from 50 to 250. The first neurosurgeon, Juan Fonseca MD, begins practice in 1950. Hospital beds grow short. One of the co-inventors of the heart/lung machine, Robert Anderson MD, comes to Tucson and open heart procedures are soon available at St. Mary’s. Tucson’s first mammogram is done by at TMC in 1959.

1960s Tucson becomes known as a specialist’s town and is reputed to have the highest number, per capita, of board-certified physicians in the United States. Physicians purchase and administer polio vaccines and in 1962 Tucson is declared the first polio-free urban area. St. Joseph’s Hospital opens. More than 850 physicians serve Tucson. In 1967 the UA College of Medicine admits its first class.

1970s UMC opens in 1971, El Dorado a few years later. The Arizona Health Sciences Center begins a legacy of innovation (first artificial wrist in 1973, one of the first heart transplant centers in 1979, filmless radiology in 1976, uses for interferon 1979).

Today there are 10,000 practicing physicians in Arizona. That is more than the state’s entire population 110 years ago. We have gone from arrow extraction to artificial hearts in two and a half generations. It is a legacy unmatched by most other regions and is a tradition upon which to build.

--Steve Nash
10/7/2004