Daniel Hale Williams

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Daniel Hale Williams
heart surgery
Scientific career
FieldsCardiology
Institutions

Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856

heart surgery.[1][2]

In 1913, Williams was elected as the only African-American charter member of the American College of Surgeons.[1]

Biography

Early life and education

Later photo of Williams

Williams was born in 1856 and raised in the city of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. His father, Daniel Williams Jr., was the son of a Scots-Irish woman and a black barber.[3] His mother, Sarah Price, was black American. His Williams family great grandfather was listed in the 1790 U. S. census for Philadelphia City, as 'other free,' a designation that included black Americans.[b]

The fifth born child, Williams lived with his parents, a brother and five sisters. His family eventually moved to

Baltimore, Maryland 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, Wisconsin
, Williams became fascinated by the work of a local physician and decided to follow his path.

He began working as an apprentice to

Chicago, Illinois.[7]

Career

When Williams graduated from what is today

Northwestern University Medical School
, he opened a private practice where his patients were white and black. Black doctors, however, were not allowed to work in America's private hospitals.

Provident Hospital

As a result, in 1891, Williams founded the Provident Hospital, which also provided a training residency for doctors and training school for nurses in Chicago. This was established mostly for the benefit of African-American residents, to increase their accessibility to health care, but its staff and patients were integrated from the start.[8][9]

Heart surgery

In 1893, Williams became the first African American on record to have successfully performed pericardium surgery to repair a wound. On September 6, 1891,[10][11] Henry Dalton had been the first American to successfully perform pericardium surgery to repair a wound.[12] Earlier successful surgeries to drain the pericardium, by performing a pericardiostomy were done by Francisco Romero in 1801[13] and Dominique Jean Larrey in 1810.[14]

On July 10, 1893, Williams repaired the torn pericardium of a knife wound patient, James Cornish.[10][15] Cornish, who was stabbed directly through the left fifth costal cartilage,[10][15] had been admitted the previous night. Williams decided to operate the next morning in response to continued bleeding, cough and "pronounced" symptoms of shock.[10][15] He performed this surgery, without the benefit of penicillin or blood transfusion, at Provident Hospital, Chicago.[16] It was not reported until 1897.[15] He undertook a second procedure to drain fluid. About fifty days after the initial procedure, Cornish left the hospital.[8]

Public and teaching posts

In 1893, during the administration of President

Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C., a post he held until 1898. That year he married Alice Johnson, who was born in the city and graduated from Howard University, and moved back to Chicago. In addition to organizing Provident Hospital, Williams also established a training school for African-American nurses at the facility. In 1897, he was appointed to the Illinois Department of Public Health, where he worked to raise medical and hospital standards.[17]

Williams was a Professor of Clinical Surgery at

Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He worked to create more hospitals that admitted African Americans. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for African-American doctors, and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only African-American doctor in the American College of Surgeons
.

Death

His wife, Alice Johnson, died in 1924.[8] Williams died in relative obscurity, of a stroke in Idlewild, Michigan on August 4, 1931. He was funeralized at St Anselm Catholic Church in Chicago, and there is debate about how well attended the service was.[18]

Personal life

Williams' grave at Graceland Cemetery

Williams was married in 1898 to Alice Johnson, natural daughter of the Jewish-American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and a biracial maid.[19] His retirement home was in Idlewild, Michigan, a black community.[20]

Williams was baptized a Catholic by Fr Joseph Eckert, SVD on his deathbed.[18] He left $2,500 (worth $44,686 in 2021) in his will to St. Elizabeth's Church in Chicago.[21] Williams was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.[22]

Legacy

In the 1890s several attempts were made to improve cardiac surgery. On September 6, 1891, the first successful pericardial sac repair operation in the United States of America was performed by

Rikshospitalet in Kristiania, now Oslo.[23][24] The first successful surgery of the heart, performed without any complications, was by Ludwig Rehn of Frankfurt, Germany, who repaired a stab wound to the right ventricle on September 7, 1896.[25][26] Despite these improvements, heart-related surgery was not widely accepted in the field of medical science until during World War II. Surgeons were forced to improve their methods of surgery in order to repair severe war wounds.[27] Although they did not receive early recognition for their pioneering work, Dalton and Williams were later recognised for their roles in cardiac surgery.[27]

Honors

Williams 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.

  • A Pennsylvania State Historical Marker was placed at U.S. Route 22 eastbound (Blair St., 300 block), Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate his accomplishments and mark his boyhood home.[28]
  • His home in Chicago is now known as the Daniel Hale Williams House and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
  • His retirement home in Idlewild was given a historical marker by the state of Michigan in 2008.
  • Several schools are named in his honor, including the
    Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine
    in Chicago; Daniel Hale Williams Elementary in Gary, Indiana; P.S. 307 Daniel Hale Williams in Brooklyn; and M.S. 180 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in the Bronx.
  • Williams Park in Chicago is also named in his honor.[29]

Representation in other media

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Although a half dozen biographical dictionaries place Daniel Hale Williams's birth date in 1858, 1856 is the date given in the U.S. Census records of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, for 1860 and of Janesville, Wisconsin, for 1880; these agree on 1856, and the former was given by his parents. Also, when Dan Williams registered officially with the Illinois State Board of Health as a physician, on April 18, 1883, he gave his age as twenty-eight. This too points to 1856, making him at his registration twenty-seven years and three months old, or in his twenty-eighth year. Buckler, Helen. Daniel Hale Williams: Negro Surgeon, Pitman Publishing Company, 1954, pp. 287–288.
  2. ^ Buckler identified Williams' Williams family great grandfather as Joseph Williams. Joseph Williams lived on Cresson Alley in Philadelphia. The alley no longer exists as the National Constitution Center (NCC) was built on the site where the alley was located. The NCC placed two plaques on its walls to present the names of the 1790 Cresson Alley residents, and so Joseph Williams' name is displayed on the NCC.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b "Daniel Hale Williams: American physician". Daniel Hale Williams | Biography & Facts | Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica. 2018. Archived from the original on July 20, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  2. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (2008). "Reference Room: Daniel Hale Williams". African American World. PBS. Archived from the original on June 29, 2008. Retrieved November 26, 2008.
  3. ^ Bigelow (1992), p. 254
  4. ^ Buckler (1954) Daniel Hale Williams
  5. ^ "First Open Heart Surgeon". History: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. Archived from the original on May 27, 2010. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
  6. OCLC 1067196558
    .
  7. ^ "Daniel Hale Williams". The Black Inventor Online Museum. Archived from the original on August 18, 2013. Retrieved September 22, 2013.
  8. ^ a b c "Daniel Hale Williams". The Black Inventor Online Museum. Archived from the original on March 31, 2009. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
  9. ^ "Provident Hospital: A Living Legacy". International Museum of Surgical Science. December 14, 2015. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
  10. ^
    ISBN 0253352215. Archived
    from the original on May 11, 2021. Retrieved May 12, 2007.
  11. ^
    PMID 17860132
    .
  12. ^ Wood, Horatio C. (1895). American Medico-Surgical Bulletin. Vol. 8. The Bulletin Publishing Company. p. 306. Archived from the original on May 11, 2021. Retrieved August 29, 2013.
  13. PMID 9307502
    .
  14. PMID 2651455
    .
  15. ^ a b c d Williams, Daniel H. (1897). "Stab Wound of the Heart and Pericardium---Suture of the Pericardium---Recover--Patient Alive Three Years Afterward". Medical Record. 51 (13): 437.
  16. ^ "History: Provident Hospital – The Provident Foundation". The Provident Foundation. 2008. Archived from the original on December 26, 2008. Retrieved November 22, 2008.
  17. ^ "Who Was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams?". Jackson Heart Study Graduate Training and Education Center. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
  18. ^
    OCLC 220544784
    .
  19. OCLC 58644475. Archived from the original
    on October 20, 2007.
  20. OCLC 964464
    .
  21. ^ "Leaves $50,000 to NAACP". The Afro American. August 22, 1931. Retrieved July 28, 2021.
  22. ^ "Daniel Hale Williams [1856–1931]". University Archives. Northwestern University Library. September 17, 2000. Archived from the original on June 14, 2017. Retrieved February 19, 2022.
  23. ISBN 1899066543
    .
  24. ^ Baksaas ST, Solberg S (January 2003). "Verdens første hjerteoperasjon". Tidsskr Nor Lægeforen (in Norwegian). 123 (2): 202–204. Archived from the original on May 11, 2021. Retrieved December 26, 2020.
  25. ^ Absolon KB, Naficy MA (2002). First successful cardiac operation in a human, 1896: a documentation: the life, the times, and the work of Ludwig Rehn (1849–1930). Rockville, Maryland : Kabel, 2002
  26. ^ Johnson SL (1970). History of Cardiac Surgery, 1896–1955. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. p. 5.
  27. ^ a b American Experience. "Timeline:Heart in History". PBS.com. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
  28. ^ "Daniel Hale Williams – Pennsylvania Historical Markers on Waymarking.com". Waymarking.com. Archived from the original on July 20, 2019. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  29. ^ "Williams (Daniel Hale) Park". Chicago Park District. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
  30. ISBN 1573929638
    .
  31. ^ "The Heart of George Cotton" a radio presentation by Richard Durham

Bibliography

  • Bigelow, Barbara Carlisle, Contemporary Black biography: profiles from the international Black community, Gale Research Inc., 1992,
    ISBN 0810385546

Further reading

External links
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