Daniel Hale
Williams was born on January
18, 1856 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of seven children
born to Daniel and Sarah Williams. Daniel's father was a barber and moved the
family to Annapolis, Maryland but died shortly thereafter of tuberculosis. Daniel's
mother realized she could not manage the entire family and sent some of the
children to live with relatives. Daniel was apprenticed to a shoemaker in
Baltimore but ran away to join his mother who had moved to Rockford, Illinois.
He later moved to Edgerton, Wisconsin where he joined his sister and opened his
own barber shop. After moving to nearby Janesville, Daniel became fascinated
with a local physician and decided to follow his path. He began working as an
apprentice to the physician (Dr. Henry Palmer) for two years and in 1880
entered what is now known as Northwestern University Medical School. After
graduation from Northwestern in 1883, he opened his own medical office in
Chicago, Illinois.
Because of primitive social and medical circumstances existing in that era, much of Williams early medical practice called for him to treat patients in their homes, including conducting occasional surgeries on kitchen tables. In doing so, Williams utilized many of the emerging antiseptic, sterilization procedures of the day and thereby gained a reputation for professionalism. He was soon appointed as a surgeon on the staff of the South Side Dispensary and then a clinical instructor in anatomy at Northwestern. In 1889 he was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Health and one year later set for to create an interracial hospital.
On January 23, 1891 Daniel Hale Williams established the Provident Hospital and Training School Association, a three story building which held 12 beds and served members of the community as a whole.
The school also served
to train Black nurses and utilized doctors of all races. Within its first year,
189 patients were treated at Provident Hospital and of those 141 saw a complete
recovery, 23 had recovered significantly, three had seen change in their
condition and 22 had died. For a brand new hospital, at that time, to see an
87% success rate was phenomenal considering the financial and health conditions
of the patient, and primitive conditions of most hospitals. Much can be
attributed to Williams insistence on the highest standards concerning
procedures and sanitary conditions.
Two and a half years
later, on July 9, 1893, a young Black man named James Cornish was injured in a
bar fight, stabbed in the chest with a knife. By the time he was transported to
Provident Hospital he was seeking closer and closer to death, having lost a
great deal of blood and having gone into shock. Williams was faced with the
choice of opening the man's chest and possibly operating internally when that
was almost unheard of in that day in age. Internal operations were unheard of
because any entrance into the chest or abdomen of a patient would almost surely
bring with it resulting infection and therefore death. Williams made the
decision to operate and opened the man's chest. He saw the damage to the man's
pericardium (sac surrounding the heart) and sutured it, then applied antiseptic
procedures before closing his chest. Fifty one days later, James Cornish walked
out of Provident Hospital completely recovered and would go on to live for
another fifty years. Unfortunately, Williams was so busy with other matters, he
did not bother to document the event and others made claims to have first
achieved the feat of performing open heart surgery. Fortunately, local newspapers
of the day did spread the news and Williams received the acclaim he deserved.
It should be noted however that while he is known as the first person to
perform an open heart surgery, it is actually more noteworthy that he was the
first surgeon to open the chest cavity successfully without the patient dying
of infection. His procedures would therefore be used as standards for future
internal surgeries.
In
February 1894, Daniel Hale Williams was appointed as Chief Surgeon at the
Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C. and reorganized the hospital, creating
seven medical and surgical departments, setting up pathological and
bacteriological units, establishing a biracial staff of highly qualified
doctors and nurses and established an internship program. Recognition of his
efforts and their success came when doctors from all over the country traveled
to Washington to view the hospital and to sit in on surgery performed there.
Almost immediately there was an astounding increase in efficiency as well as a
decrease in patient deaths.
During
this time, Williams married Alice Johnson and the couple soon moved to Chicago
after Daniel resigned from the Freedmen's hospital. He resumed his position as
Chief Surgeon at Provident Hospital (which could now accommodate 65 patients)
as well as for nearby Mercy Hospital and St. Luke's Hospital, an exclusive
hospital for wealthy White patients. He was also asked to travel across the
country to attend to important patients or to oversee certain procedures.
When the American Medical Association refused to accept Black members, Williams helped to set up and served as Vice-President of the National Medical Association. In 1912, Williams was appointed associate attending surgeon at St. Luke's and worked there until his retirement from the practice of medicine.
Upon his retirement, Daniel Hale Williams had bestowed upon him numerous honors and awards. He received honorary degrees from Howard and Wilberforce Universities, was named a charter member of the American College of Surgeons and was a member of the Chicago Surgical Society. Williams died on August 4, 1931, having set standards and examples for surgeons, both Black and White, for years to come.
Daniel Hale William,25-12-2012,http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/daniel-williams.html
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