Surgical pioneer Daniel Hale Williams, who performed the second successful open-heart surgery and founded the first non-segregated hospital in the United States, was born on this date in 1856. Born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Williams worked his way through Janesville Classical Academy as a barber and bass violinist. In 1893, he received a medical degree from Chicago Medical College, now part of Northwestern University. While still a medical student, Williams founded Provident Hospital, the first Chicago hospital with blacks on staff. In 1893, Williams repaired the torn pericardium of a knife wound patient, James Cornish, the second on record. Cornish, who was stabbed directly through the left fifth costal cartilage, had been admitted the previous night and Williams made the decision to operate the next morning in response to continued bleeding, cough and pronounced symptoms of shock. He performed this surgery, without the benefit of penicillin or blood transfusion, at Provident Hospital. About 55 days later, James Cornish had successfully recovered from the surgery. In 1893, during the administration of President Grover Cleveland, Williams was appointed surgeon-in-chief of Freedmans Hospital in Washington, D.C., a post he held until 1898 when he married and moved to Chicago. In addition to organizing the hospital, Williams also established a training school for black nurses at the facility. In addition, Williams served as a teacher of Clinical Surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville and was an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He worked to create more hospitals and for accessibility to blacks. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for black doctors and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only black doctor in the American College of Surgeons.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 23:55:40 +0000
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