Dr. Jacob Tally Wilhite

Wilhite worked with Ben M. Worsham, superintendent of the state hospital, and L. H. Kirk to establish the Pasteur Institute, and he took charge of it six months after it opened. There he treated some 12,000 patients thought to have been exposed to rabies, of whom only sixteen died, and examined thousands of animals. By his death it drew fifty patients a day. He never asked for a raise or sought profit from his work, and because he never published his findings, many were lost when he died. He never married.

What the plaque says

Dr. Jacob Tally Wilhite (April 3, 1875 - January 27, 1927) Born on a farm near this site, Jacob Tally Wilhite received his early education in the public schools of the Willow Springs community. He attended the University of Texas in Austin and taught school in Bastrop County before continuing his studies at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Wilhite earned his medical degree in 1903 and served an internship at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston. That same year, he became assistant to the director of the State Lunatic Asylum (now Austin State Hospital). During his tenure there, he began studying rabies and its treatment. The State Legislature appropriated funds for his research in 1904 and Wilhite became director of the new institution, called the Pasteur Institute of Austin, in 1905. Wilhite's research soon led him to the discovery of a stain to detect rabies in body tissue. He became a leading authority on the disease and was known throughout the world. In 1927 the State Legislature again appropriated funds for the Pasteur Institute for the construction of a new facility at 5th and Trinity streets. Dr. Wilhite contracted influenza and died before its completion, and the building was dedicated in his honor. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• McKinney Falls State Park — 5.1 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Barton Springs Pool — 11 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 11 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Texas State Cemetery — 11 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.

More markers nearby

• Santiago Del Valle Grant — 5.2 mi
• Manchaca United Methodist Church — 5.3 mi
• Buda — 5.9 mi
• Antioch Colony — 6.3 mi