Born On This Day ~ January 18 ~ Daniel Hale Williams ~ Surgeon Who Performed First Successful Open Heart Surgery In Thee United States

Born: January 18, 1856 (Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania)
Died: August 4, 1931 (Idlewild, Michigan)

Famous For/Known For:
Highly recognized black heart surgeon who was a pioneer in his field.

A Little About Daniel Hale Williams:
Born to Daniel Hale Williams II, a barber, and Sarah Price Williams. After the death of his father the family moved quite often.

Williams worked as a shoemaker and barber until he landed a job employed as office help for a surgeon. He decided then to pursue an education and began attending Chicago Medical College.

In 1883 he received his medical degree and opened a private practice in an integrated neighborhood on Chicago’s south side.

In 1891 Williams founded the Provident Hospital and Training School Association. It was the first medical facility to not only have an interracial staff but the first training facility for African American nurses.

Due to Williams practices and procedures Provident Hospital’s success rate in patient recovery became 87%.

In 1893 he performed a successful emergency open heart procedure on a severely stabbed victim. It was this incident that brought about Williams being nationally recognized.

In 1894 Williams was appointed Chief Surgeon at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.

In 1895 because black medical practitioners were not allowed admission to the all white American Medical Association he co-founded the National Medical Association.

Throughout his medical career, Williams was presented with many honors and awards. In 1913 he became the first black member of the exclusive American College of Surgeons.

Daniel Hale Williams III died at the age of 75.

Books About/Written By Daniel Hale Williams:

Sure Hands Strong Heart – The Life of Daniel Hale Williams

Daniel Hale Williams (Getting to know the World’s Greatest Inventors and Scientists)

The Heart Man: Dr Daniel Hale Williams

*This blog post contains affiliate links.

Reference:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/partners/early/e_pioneers_williams.html

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