Daniel Hale Williams

Daniel Hale Williams, born in 1858,  has been credited with performing the first open heart operation.

An article by W. Montague Cobb in the Journal of the National Medical Association in 1953 (1) records that Williams was famed as the first person to operate on the heart (rather than using the specific phrase "open heart surgery").  Cobb relates that a planned biography of Williams found that there were earlier cases, and as a result that biography was not published.   The heart operation performed by Williams was the suturing of a stab wound to the pericardium, published in 1897 (2).  Another article in the same journal in 1935 records investigations into whether Williams was the first to operate on the heart, investigations related in Cobb's article and involving a search in the Surgeon General's Library, now the National Library of Medicine. 

Williams also founded the first hospital to be run by African Americans, in Chicago, and its associated nursing school, which admitted African American students when other nursing schools would not.   He also cofounded the National Medical Association, a national organisation for African American physicians.    He was also the first African American admitted to the American College of Surgeons.    

References

1. Cobb WM. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. J Natl Med Assoc. 1953;45(5):379-85.  This is in PubMed Central.

2.     Williams DH.  Stab wound of the heart and pericardium: suture of the pericardium, recovery - patient alive three years afterwards.  Medical Record. 1897;51:437.   Available through the Hathi Trust.

Other articles about Daniel Hale Williams

Dr. Daniel Williams takes priority in successful operation for Stab Wound of Human Heart. J Natl Med Assoc. 1935;27(4):162-3.

Daniel Hale Williams Cardiac Operation Priority. J Natl Med Assoc. 1960;52(6):447-9.

Beatty WK. Daniel Hale Williams: innovative surgeon, educator, and hospital administrator. Chest. 1971;60(2):175-82.

Beatty WK. Daniel Hale Williams--pioneer surgeon and hospital administrator. Proc Inst Med Chic. 1979;32(7):156.

Cobb WM. Daniel Hale Williams-Pioneer and Innovator. J Natl Med Assoc. 1944;36(5):158-9.

Gordon RC. Daniel Hale Williams: pioneer Black surgeon and educator. J Invest Surg. 2005;18(3):105-6, cover.

Olivier AF. Classics in thoracic surgery. In proper perspective: Daniel Hale Williams, M.D. Ann Thorac Surg. 1984;37(1):96-7.

Dr Jane Cooke Wright

I recommend Christie Watson's book about her experience of nursing, The language of kindness (1).  There is a chapter about cancer nursing, which mixes Watson's experience of nursing cancer patients with her experience of her father living with cancer, and being nursed by a Marie Curie Nurse.

In that chapter, Watson mentions Dr Jane Cooke Wright (1919-2013), clinical oncologist, who discovered the anticancer properties of methotrexate, and investigated anticancer agents in vitro.   She was one of the founders of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which was started because the America Association for Cancer Research was too laboratory based.  African American, Cooke Wright's father was one of the first African American medical graduates from Harvard, and her step grandfather the first African American graduate of Yale.

Jane Cooke Wright is the subject of a 2016 article in the Journal of Medical Biography (2), and of a 2013 article in the Oncologist (3). Those two reference several of her 135 papers.   She was also the subject of obituaries in the BMJ (4) and the Lancet (5), and the New York Times.

She also has an entry in the National Library of Medicine's Changing the face of medicine: celebrating America's women physicians.

I did start thinking about this post in Black History Month, and even though the Month itself ended yesterday, it is not too late to read it.

References

1. Watson C. The language of kindness : a nurse's story. London: Chatto & Windus; 2018.

2. Crosby HL. Jane Cooke Wright (1919-2013): Pioneering oncologist, woman and humanitarian. J Med Biogr. 2016;24(1):38-41.

3. Swain SM. A Passion for Solving the Puzzle of Cancer: Jane Cooke Wright, M.D., 1919‐2013. The oncologist (Dayton, Ohio). 2013;18(6):646-8.

4. Newman L. Jane Cooke Wright. BMJ : British Medical Journal. 2013;346:f2902-f.

5. Watts G. Jane Cooke Wright. The Lancet (British edition). 2013;381(9875):1354-.

Dr James McCune Smith

James McCune Smith (1813-1865) was the first African American to gain a degree in medicine.   He was unsuccessful in gaining a place at medical school in New York state, his home state, so his friends and benefactors paid for him to travel to Glasgow, so he gained a degree at the University of Glasgow.  That university is building a new learning hub and naming it after him.

As well as being a physician, he was an abolitionist, working with Frederick Douglass, and made contributions to the fields of physiology and medical statistics.   

The Wikipedia page about him is a good starting point. 

I found two articles about him, in PubMed.   One is cited in the Wikipedia article and the other not.

The older one (1) describes a case report that was read on his behalf to the New York Medical and Surgical Society, and references a paper that he wrote in the New York Medical Journal (2).   

According to the newer one (3) these were the first case report by an African American, and the first paper by an African American physician based in the United States.   

McCune Smith has an entry in CHAAMP, from the University of Virginia.

References

1. Morgan TM. The education and medical practice of Dr. James McCune Smith (1813-1865), first black American to hold a medical degree. J Natl Med Assoc. 2003;95(7):603-14.  Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2594637/ (Accessed: 15th October 2020)

2. Smith JM. On the influence of opium upon the catamenial functions. New York Journal of Medicine. 1844;2:56-8. Available at https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nnc2.ark:/13960/t1gj2984x?urlappend=%3Bseq=72 (Accessed 15th October 2020)

3. Lujan HL, DiCarlo SE. First African-American to hold a medical degree: brief history of James McCune Smith, abolitionist, educator, and physician. Adv Physiol Educ. 2019;43(2):134-9.  Available at: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00119.2018 (Accessed 15th October 2020)

Dr Harold Moody

Dr Harold Moody was the subject of the Google Doodle on 1st September.   The image caught my eye as the designer intended, and I followed the link.

And then, I started reading Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I am no longer talking to white people about race, and there he was again.

Moody was born in Jamaica, came to England to study medicine (at King's College London), and then worked in London as a general practitioner.   In 1931, he founded the League of Coloured Peoples, a civil rights organisation.

I could find nothing in medical journals about him, but did find this book chapter by David Killingray, published in Manchester Openhive.

And that linked Moody with another area of my life.   He was a Congregational Christian.   Congregational churches are each independent, with roots in 17th century England, when we broke with the Church of England because we wanted to have that independence to worship in the way we wanted.   Moody had attended a Congregational Church in Jamaica, and then in London, although the chapter does not say which London church.    He was chair of the London Missionary Society, and seems to have been on a list (real or in someone's head) of possible people to be chair of the Congregational Union, the national organisation of the time.   Moody sent a communication to the editors of the Journal of Negro History (Moody, H. (1933). Communications. The Journal of Negro History, 18(1), 92-101).  It reports an address he gave at Friends' House in London (headquarters of the Quakers),  describing the inaugural meeting of the League.  The League's inaugural meeting was held at Memorial Hall in London, which was the headquarters of the Congregational Union.    So Moody is definitely part of my church's heritage, but someone I had not come across before.

There is more about the League of Coloured Peoples on this page from the Open University series on the history of South Asians in Britain, "Making Britain", and this second page from the same project, which has a good reference list.  

The British Library have the objectives of the group.

And there is an article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription needed - the University of Leicester has one).

First in an occasional series of posts to mark Black History Month.   Watch for others!