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On this day in 1865, Greenville S. Dowell, a Virginia native born in 1822, and a group of local physicians formed the Galveston Medical Society. A few months later, in November, the trustees of Soule University organized Galveston Medical College, the first medical school in Texas, and Dowell was appointed professor of anatomy; he later served as professor of surgery and as dean of the college. The same year Dowell began making plans to publish the first medical periodical in Texas, the Galveston Medical Journal, which began publication in January 1866. When Soule University closed Galveston Medical College in 1873, Dowell and J. M. Callaway founded Texas Medical College and Hospital, where Dowell continued to teach surgery until his death in 1881.