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BEXAR
By J.J. Waller Jr., MD
Many physicians practiced in the San Antonio Bexar County area
during the 1800s, and the majority provided the best care possible
under the frontier conditions. All should be remembered for their
dedication and tenacity, but there were a few that contributed greatly
to medicine and society for one reason or another.
Dr. Frederico Zervan was the first physician mentioned in the
archives of Spanish documents for Bexar County. He accompanied
a bishop in 1805 on his travels through the province, and at the gov-
ernment’s request he remained in San Antonio de Bexar and was as-
signed to the new hospital in the Alamo. An incident occurred
during this period in which the Attorney General of the province,
made a complaint to the governor that Dr. Zervan was inefficient
and inattentive to the patients, neglecting them, and was a quack
and requested that the doctor be replaced. After an investigation by
the governor, it was determined that the doctor’s practice was greatly
appreciated by both the military and the people, and the complaint
had no grounds whatsoever. Therefore, the governor exonerated the
doctor, raised his pay to 30 pesos a month, and dismissed the attor-
ney from the position as Attorney General. (Obviously, an early
inkling of tort reform in Texas.)
In 1808, Dr. Zervan retired and a new physician, a Dr. Munive,
was appointed as the surgeon of the military hospital. He remained
for two years and left, so there was no physician in the area, according these two physicians, Dr. John Shackelford and Dr. Joseph Bernard,
to the archives, until 1819.
In the archives, it is stated that in 1806 the government granted a
Dr. Latigue permission to practice as a “master of surgery in the class
of dentist.” In the archives there is no further mention of this indi-
vidual, but he probably was the first dentist in San Antonio and pos-
sibly in the state of Texas.
The first battle of the Texas Revolution was fought at Gonzales on
Oct. 2, 1835, after which the Army of Texas under the direction of
Stephen F. Austin and Ben Milam moved on to attack San Antonio.
After a two-month battle, General Martin Perfecto de Cos, com-
mander of the Mexican garrison and brother-in-law to Santa Anna,
surrendered his 600-man garrison to the 250-man Texas Army. Sev-
eral of the physicians with the Army in San Antonio at that time re-
HISTORY
mained in the Army to eventually fight and die in the Battle of the
Alamo in 1836.
One of those remaining in San Antonio was a Dr. Amos Pollard.
He graduated from the Middlebury College and Vermont Academy
of Medicine in 1824. He joined the Stephen F. Austin colony in
1834 and joined the Texas Army in 1835. Dr. Pollard was a part of
the action in taking San Antonio, and he remained in the Alamo
and was assigned as the Chief Medical Officer of the forces stationed
there. He directed several urgent dispatches from the Alamo to Sam
Houston and Gov. Henry Smith beginning several weeks before the
siege by Santa Ana. He was urgently requesting either money or
medical supplies and additional instruments that would be needed
to care for any wounded that would occur in the forthcoming battle.
Such assistance was not forthcoming, as were neither additional
forces for the Alamo. He and two other physicians were among the
gallant defenders who were overrun and annihilated on March 6,
1836. Certain it is that at the age of 33 he, along with the other two
physicians, achieved for the medical profession a portion of the glory
of the Alamo. His portrait hangs on the walls of the Alamo.
Of particular interest at this time was the plight of two physicians
who were assigned to Fannin’s command at Goliad and were spared
from the massacre of the defenders on March 27, 1836. Eventually
were under guard and escorted back to San Antonio to provide medical
care for Mexican soldiers wounded in the siege of the Alamo. They
remained there treating the wounded Mexicans and also some of the
civil population for several months following the Battle of San Jacinto
on April 21, 1836, which essentially ended hostilities with Mexico.
Dr. Bernard remained in the Texas Army for another year and then
opened a practice nearby. It should be noted that at the Battle of San
Jacinto there was a San Antonio physician who was the only casualty
of the action, Dr. William Motley, who was only 24 years old.
Dr. Edward Weidermann was a physician practicing in Bexar
County during the time of the Republic. He was a military surgeon,
a Russian scholar and naturalist. He was highly cultivated and was
considered an excellent physician and surgeon. On the night of
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