The World’s First Open Heart Surgery

The World’s First Open Heart Surgery
(And the Life-story of an American Black Doctor, 1883)
@Asim Deb

In July 1893, the young man James Cornish was stabbed in a neighborhood scuffle as a consequence of alcoholic brawl and was rushed to Provident Hospital with a one-inch knife wound in his chest near his heart. Surgery was the only option, but that was the time when medical professionals believed operating on the heart was too risk for anyone’s life.

Before the doctor on duty Dr. Daniel Hale Williams could administer any aid, Cornish had already collapsed due to loss of blood, and also the alcoholic effects. Even without support of x-rays, blood transfusions, or antibiotics to fight infections, even the operating theatre room had only crude anesthesia. However, Dr. Williams decided to operate, risking his surgical reputation. He called six doctors (four white, two black) and asked them to observe while he would operate. With six physicians witnessing the operation, he opened the patient’s chest cavity. Dr. Williams inspected the wound area between two ribs, exposing the breastbone. He cut the rib cartilage and created a small trapdoor to the heart. Underneath, he found a damaged left internal mammary artery and sutured it. Then, inspecting the pericardium (the sac around the heart) he saw that the knife had left a gash near the right coronary artery. With the heart beating and transfusion impossible, Williams rinsed the wound with salt solution, held the edges of the palpitating wound with forceps, and sewed them together. Dr. Williams had decided the heart muscle didn’t need sewing up, but he did suture the pericardium. It was a daring operation, but successful.

So, on the day of 9th July 1893, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams became the world’s first surgeon to perform a successful open-heart surgery, the first time a surgeon could successfully reach the chest cavity and surgically explored the heart. Fifty-one days later, the patient Cornish was released from the hospital. Completely recovered, the patient lived for another 20 years, outliving his surgeon by 12 years.

“He obviously was an inspiration for many physicians and a trailblazer,” said Dr. Ivor Benjamin, director of the Cardiovascular Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a past president of the American Heart Association. “We are really standing on the shoulders of giants. He is a giant not just for his own people, but for the entire medical profession.”

The achievement wasn’t Williams’ only pioneering move. Just two years earlier, he founded Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, the nation’s first Black-owned and operated hospital in America, treating both Black and white patients. It gave Black doctors and nurses an opportunity to practice medicine at a time when most medical and training facilities excluded them because of their race. He was also the first Black man appointed to the Illinois State Board of Health and was a charter member of the National Medical Association (NMA), the nation’s oldest and largest organization representing Black physicians. At a time when Black people were denied admission to white hospitals or relegated to all-Black wards with substandard care, the NMA made it a priority to eliminate health disparities and ensure access to professional medical care for all.

However, the early life of Williams was different, it’s an inspiring story. He was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania on January 18, 1856. His father died of tuberculosis when he was only 10 years old and family moved to Baltimore, Maryland to live with their relatives. At the age of 17, Daniel followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and became a barber. He also played bass violin on the side, but he quickly realized that neither profession was his calling. Daniel returned to his family barber shop. Ultimately Daniel decided to pursue his education. He studied law for a short time following his high school graduation. Then, at the age of 22, he became an apprentice with Dr. Henry Palmer, a highly accomplished surgeon. He graduated with an M.D. degree (Doctor of Medicine) in 1883 from the Chicago Medical College (now known as Northwestern University Medical School). His education was funded by Mary Jane Richardson Jonesm, a prominent leader of Chicago’s black community. Then he practiced medicine in Chicago at a time when there were only three other black physicians in Chicago (providentfoundation.org). He also worked with the Equal Rights League, a black civil rights organization active during the Reconstruction era.

That was an era when for any Black man in America to even have a medical degree was an accomplishment. In 1837, Dr. James McCune became the first Black man in the U.S. to earn a medical degree. He had to get his medical education in Scotland because American medical schools did not admit Black people. Ten years later, Dr. David Jones Peck became the first Black man to earn a medical degree from a U.S. institution, graduating from Rush Medical College in Chicago. Howard University created its own medical school in 1868 to train black doctors but their opportunities to practice medicine remained rare. In 1883, Dr. Williams was one of just three practicing Black doctors in Chicago at the time.

“I think that ultimately, Dr. Williams’ success and his recognition came not out of his race, but his accomplishments,” said Dr. Claudia Fegan, the Chief Medical Officer for the Cook County Health system, which includes Provident Hospital. “Though it closed for a time in the 1980s, Provident still serves the same mission Williams established at the time of its creation in the late 19th century”, she said.

In 1900, Dr. Williams became a visiting professor of surgery at one of the nation’s few Black medical schools, Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.

Provident Hospital students observing a doctor perform a mock operation in 1942. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress).

The example of Benjamin was also unique. The Guyanese man earned his medical degree in Scotland and performed the first blood transfusion in West Africa. “In my own life, I was not lacking for pioneers,” said Benjamin, who came to the U.S. after finishing high school in Guyana and was mentored by other leading figures in medicine who shared the challenges of an immigrant heritage. “I understand the value and importance of having these key individuals who, in spite of the odds, were able to be not just successful but first – and oftentimes best – in class.”

Williams was also responsible for advancements in the accessibility of health care to urban black citizens in Chicago, by opening Provident Hospital, the first interracial hospital in the United States, in 1891. Provident not only improved health care for black citizens but also provided training and staff opportunities for young black men and women interested in pursuing a vocation in the medical field. Later, as Chief Surgeon for the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., Williams improved the hospital’s organization and offered both training programs for nurses and staff opportunities for doctors.

Williams worked diligently on revitalization, improving surgical procedures, increasing specialization, launching ambulance services and continuing to provide opportunities for black medical professionals, among other feats. In 1895, he co-founded the National Medical Association, a professional organization for black medical practitioners, as an alternative to the American Medical Association, which didn’t allow African-American membership.

He died at the age of 73 at Idlewild, Michigan.

Source:
** Biography.Com, Encyc.com)
** https://www.heart.org/en/news/
** https://www.britannica.com/biography/
** https://www.biography.com/
** http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/medicine/
** https://www.jsums.edu/gtec/

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