Medical Firsts Sample
Daniel Hale Williams (1856–1931) performed the first successful open heart surgery. On July 10, 1893, James Cornish, a young Black man, went into shock after being stabbed in the chest during a knife fight. He was taken to the Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Williams, a Black physician, had founded the interracial hospital in 1891. To save Cornish, he performed a risky operation. He exposed the breastbone, cut through a rib, made a small opening to the heart, repaired a damaged internal mammary artery, and closed a hole in the pericardium, or sac surrounding the heart. The operation Williams performed was done under difficult emergency conditions using rudimentary anesthesia. Antibiotic drugs and blood transfusions had not yet been developed. Fifty-one days later, Cornish left the hospital a healthy man who lived at least 20 more years.
Daniel Williams was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, one of eight siblings. His father died when he was nine, and his mother then moved the family several times. Williams was initially apprenticed to a shoemaker in Baltimore, Maryland, but disliked the work. Eventually he moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, where he became a successful barber. Ambitious and talented, Williams then became an apprentice under Dr. Henry Palmer (1827–1895), a white man who later became Surgeon General of Wisconsin. In 1880, Williams was accepted at the Chicago Medical School (now Northwestern University Medical School) and graduated with an MD degree.
In the 1880s in Chicago and elsewhere, Black doctors were not hired by private hospitals, and there were very few opportunities for Black women to receive formal nursing training. Emma Reynolds, sister of Reverend Louis Reynolds, a prominent Black clergyman in Chicago, was one of those women who wanted to become a nurse. Unable to enroll in nursing school because of her race, her brother asked Williams to help her. Williams was unable to persuade any nursing school to accept Emma. In response, and with the help of many donors including the Armour Meat Packing Company, Williams founded the Black-run but interracial Provident Hospital and Nursing Training School in 1891. It was here that he performed the first open heart surgery.
To read more, order Medical Firsts Innovations and Milestones that Changed the World from Amazon.com