Samuel Clark Red

Samuel Clark Red, physician and author, son of Dr. George Clark and Rebecca (Stuart) Red, was born at Gay Hill, Washington County, Texas, in 1861. He attended Austin College and Washington and Lee University and in 1885 was the first student to receive a B.A. from the University of Texas. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, in 1887 and established his practice in Houston. He and Katharine Groesbeck were married in Philadelphia in 1891. She died in 1901, and in 1906 he married Georgie Cook Plunkett of Waco. He fathered at least seven children by his two wives. Red was county physician of Harris County, one of the organizers of the Harris County Medical Society, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and president of the Texas Medical Association. With his uncle, Dr. David F. Stuart, he established the first hospital in Houston. He supervised the first nurses' training school in Houston and introduced ambulance service there. He was said to have been the first surgeon in the United States to use the Whiting method of treatment for hip fracture and the first in Houston to use the X ray, to perform an appendectomy, to repair a hernia, and to use diphtheria antitoxin. Red wrote Biographical Sketch of Ashbel Smith (1929) and A Brief History of the First Presbyterian Church, Houston, Texas, 1839–1939 (1939). He contributed many articles to scientific journals. He died in Houston in 1940 and was buried at Forest Park Cemetery.