Daniel Hale Williams was born on January 18, 1856 (162 years ago today January 18, 2018) in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of seven children born to Daniel and Sarah Williams, just nine years before slavery was abolished in the USA. After working as a shoemaker and a barber, he became an apprentice to a doctor for two years before entering Chicago Medical College, now Northwestern University Medical School, in 1880.
Murphy Browne © Wednesday July 08 2015
“In 1893 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open heart surgery. On July 9, 1893 James Cornish was stabbed in a Chicago street fight. Dr. Williams then did the unthinkable. He sliced open the man’s chest and successfully stitched up his heart. With that he ushered in a new age of medical science.”
Excerpt from an advertisement in the March 1989 issue of Ebony magazine.
On Sunday, July 9, 1893, an African-American doctor made history by performing the first successful open heart surgery. The patient, James Cornish, was a young African-American man who lived for 50 years after the surgery.
In her 2010 book, Why Does My Heart Pump?: All about the Human Body, White Australian author, Helen Bethune, wrote: “In 1893 a young African-American man named James Cornish was admitted to the hospital. He had been stabbed in the chest. Williams realized that the only way to save the man’s life was to open his chest and operate. The operation was a success, mainly because of Williams’ sterilization methods. James Cornish lived another 50 years.”
The surgical procedure that Williams performed on July 9, 1893 was considered so revolutionary that several newspapers carried the story in spite of the fact that Williams was African-American. In her 1954 book, Doctor Dan: Pioneer in American Surgery, White American writer, Helen Buckler stated: “The doctors who had watched Dr. Dan make history were not slow in telling other doctors about the daring venture and its great success. For weeks surgical conversation dwelt on little else. Dr. Dan soon found himself a respected man in Chicago\’s topmost medical circles. The hospital staff, the Board, and friends of Provident, passed the exciting news around. Kohlsaat sent a reporter from the Inter Ocean, of which he was part owner, to interview the thirty-seven-year-old surgeon, ten years out of medical college, who had won this laurel.”
At that time (1893), surgery on internal organs was unheard of because any entrance into the chest or abdomen of a patient would almost surely result in infection and subsequently death. The earliest surgeries were crude at best and likely to have been performed out of desperation. According to some sources, it was not until the 1900s that the risk of dying after surgery was less than 50 per cent.
Surgical procedures that are commonplace today, such as appendectomies, were uncommon. Until 1885, a person with appendicitis was expected to die of the infection that occurred once the appendix ruptured. Anesthesia was not routinely used during surgery until the late 1800s and early surgical techniques were rudimentary at best and barbaric at worst.
In the September 1996 newsletter of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Vol. 60, No. 9, surgery before anesthesia is described in part: “Elective surgery was performed very infrequently prior to the advent of effective anesthesia. From 1821 to 1846, the annual reports of the MGH recorded 333 surgeries, representing barely more than one case per month. Surgery was a last and desperate resort. Reminiscing in 1897 about pre-anesthesia surgery, one elderly Boston physician could only compare it to the Spanish Inquisition. He recalled ‘yells and screams, most horrible in my memory now, after an interval of so many years.’ Over the centuries, numerous techniques had been used to dull sensation for surgery. Soporifics (sleep-inducing and awareness-dulling agents) and narcotics were prepared from a wide range of plants, including marijuana, belladonna and jimsonweed. Healers attempted to induce a psychological state of anesthesia by mesmerism or hypnosis. Distraction could be provided by rubbing the patient with counterirritants such as stinging nettles. A direct but crude way of inducing a state of insensitivity was to knock the patient unconscious with a blow to the jaw. But by 1846, ‘opium and alcohol were the only agents which continued to be regarded as of practical value in diminishing the pain of operations.’ Unfortunately, the large doses of alcohol needed to produce stupefaction were likely to cause nausea, vomiting and death instead of sleep. Opium, while a strong analgesic, had significant side effects itself and was typically not powerful enough to completely blunt a surgical stimulus. The accounts and recollections of surgery before the days of effective anesthesia are gruesome.”
It was during this time when surgery was routinely risky and internal surgery almost unheard of that Williams risked his reputation to perform the heart surgery that eventually earned him fame. Today, the story of the African-American doctor who performed the first successful open-heart surgery can be found in a few books and on websites like www.encyclopedia.com: “A young Black man named James Cornish had been stabbed in a neighborhood scuffle. He was rushed to Provident Hospital with a one-inch knife wound in his chest near his heart. By the time Williams could administer aid, Cornish had collapsed from loss of blood and shock. Risking his surgical reputation, Williams decided to operate – at that time without benefit of x-rays, blood transfusions, or antibiotics to fight infections.”
The surgery on July 9, 1893 was not the first time that Williams made history. In 1891, he was the founder of the first African-American owned hospital, which welcomed patients of any race. In Why Does My Heart Pump?: All about the Human Body, Helen Bethune acknowledges that: “The first open-heart surgery was performed by the African-American physician Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931) in 1893. He founded and worked at the Provident Hospital and Training School, in Chicago, the first hospital to be run by African Americans in America. It became famous for its advanced sterilization and antiseptic methods.”
Williams was born on January 18, 1856 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of seven children born to Daniel and Sarah Williams, just nine years before slavery was abolished in the USA. After working as a shoemaker and a barber, he became an apprentice to a doctor for two years before entering Chicago Medical College, now Northwestern University Medical School, in 1880.
Graduating from medical school in 1883, he opened his medical practice in Chicago, Illinois. At that time, African-American doctors were not allowed to work in Chicago hospitals, neither were African-American patients admitted to the hospitals. Williams established the first integrated hospital, the Provident Hospital and Training School Association, on January 23, 1891. Housed in a three-story building, Provident Hospital provided a place for African-American doctors to practice and a training school for student nurses.
Following the successful open-heart surgery, from 1894 to 1898 Williams was the Surgeon-in-Chief at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. He also founded the National Medical Association in 1895 because African-American doctors were denied membership in the American Medical Association. As a charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913, he was the first and only African-American member for many years.
Today, Provident Hospital, located at 550 E. 51st Street, Chicago, Illinois, is a public hospital and a member of the Cook County Health & Hospitals System (CCHHS.) The hospital earned “The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval for Hospital Accreditation by demonstrating continuous compliance with its health care performance.”
Provident is a Joint Commission-accredited hospital of 25 acute medical/surgical beds, 21 private and two semi-private rooms, and a “regional healthcare centre” offering same-day surgery, comprehensive diagnostic imaging services, cardiac diagnostics, laboratory services, and rehabilitative services/physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech pathology. Primary and specialty ambulatory clinic sessions in over 16 medical specialties are also provided.
Provident Hospital is a teaching hospital associated with Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine. The Provident Foundation, located at 1525 East 53rd Street, Chicago, Illinois, is dedicated to preserving the Provident Hospital and Training School’s legacy. The mission of the Provident Foundation is to “preserve the living legacy of Provident Hospital and the contributions of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, by promoting education for and providing scholarship opportunities to urban youth pursuing careers as doctors, nurses and health care professionals.”
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who transitioned on August 4, 1931, would be very proud of his enduring legacy.
Murphy Browne © 2015
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