Since 1900 a physician and surgeon at Fort Worth and professor of gynecology in the Physio-Medical College of Texas, Dr. Massie is, by reason of his long experience and high ability, one of the recognized leaders in the medical profession of North Texas and one of the leading exponents of the physio-medical school of theory and practice.
Born and reared on a farm in Gasconade county, Missouri, and receiving his literary education at Washington, Missouri, he came to Texas when a boy of nineteen and located at Bedford, Tarrant county. He was employed in a general store at Bedford, and a stock of drugs being one of the departments of the business, he learned to fill physicians’ prescriptions. This experience and a more than social acquaintance with Dr. Holt, then a practitioner at Bedford, led him to take up the study of medicine. After he had accumulated enough money from his earnings in the store to give him a good start in college, he entered the Physio-Medical College of Indianapolis, where he successfully completed the curricula of study and was graduated in 1889. On his return to Texas he began a practice in Chico, Wise county. A year at that place was followed by a year at Seymour, Baylor county, then he was located in Dallas eight years, whence, after a few months at Mineral Wells, he finally opened his office in Fort Worth in 1900, where he has since made his home and center of professional practice, his painstaking and skillful methods, added to his years of experience and study, bringing him gratifying success.
With the well known Physio-Medical College of Texas, located at Dallas, Dr. Massie’s name will always be identified as that of one of the founders, and sincerest workers in its behalf. Dr. Massie at present is vice president of the board of trustees and occupies in the faculty the chair of gynecology. The college began with seven students, in 1905 had forty-three, and in number of students and general success it now outranks the Indianapolis college of the same school of practice. The course is very thorough, the faculty, composed of only men of high ability in the different branches of their profession, is complete for every department of medical instruction. The college at Dallas has received building from Dr. Johnson, of California, who make a permanent endowment for the institution. Other prominent men in Texas have taken a financial interest in building up the institution. Other prominent men in Texas have taken a financial interest in building up the institution, and the Physio-Medical College has already taken high rank among the schools for professional training in this state.
The physio-medical school of medicine is an outgrowth and a complete and modern development of the system founded by Dr. Samuel Thompson of Virginia. The principles of the theory and practice proved and established by Dr. Thompson formed the original system from which the Eclectic school was developed, but as the tendency of the Eclectics was to drift back toward the old school, the physio-medical school, in later years, became the proper exponent of the system founded upon the research and investigations started by Dr. Thompson. It adherents call special attention to the fact that its medication is entirely without alcohol and other poisonous drugs, the materia medica including all necessary agents for the restoration of the body in disease without the employment of poisonous agencies. Stated in the words of one of its advocates, “the idea of physio-medicalism is that of raising medicine to the rank of a true science—not to the science of probabilities, but to that of exact knowledge. The physio-medical idea rejects absolutely the giving of poisons in medicine, and, instead, as its name implies, uses nothing but non-poisonous agents in which alone resides the tendency to bring back organs or structures to their physiological standard. The practical advantages to their physiological standard. The practical advantages of the system may be stated as follows: It is eminently life-saving and efficient: it is safe and scientific; it never yet made a drunkard by offering him the cursed cup; it never made an opium or morphine salve, nor has it ever ruined rotted bones with mercurials; its record is clean these hundred years and more.”
Dr. Massie was the pioneer practitioner of the physio-medical school in Dallas. In 1893, when the Texas Association of Physio-Medical Physicians and Surgeons was formed, he was elected its first president, and he has at various times contributed to the physio-medical magazines.
Dr. Massie was first married at Bedford to Miss Kate Bobo, granddaughter of Captain W. W. Bobo, a historic character of Texas and of Tarrant county. There were two children by this marriage. After the death of his first wife Dr. Massie married Miss Cornelia Thomas, at Chico, and they are the parents of three children.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 30-31.
Visit our bookstore, Jacobus Books