WEBVTT - Dr. Daniel Hale Williams 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:10.920 of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:14.880 Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:16.840 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:19.960 Today we are going to talk about doctor. 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:24.000 Daniel Hale Williams, who's often described as the first person 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.000 to successfully perform an open heart surgery. 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:29.080 That's not completely correct. 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:33.479 There were some other earlier open heart procedures, but he 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.360 was still a surgical innovator at a time when the 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.519 field of surgery was not nearly as advanced as it 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:45.000 is today. And he was also a huge part of 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:49.000 the Black hospital movement that was in the pretty much 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:53.479 the first half of the twentieth century, opening hospitals for 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.960 black patients when a lot of the US medical system 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:01.600 was racially segregated and a lot of places black patients 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:03.680 did not have anywhere they could receive care. 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.640 Daniel Hale Williams, the third known as Dan, was born 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:13.120 on January eighteenth, eighteen fifty six, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.080 was the fifth of seven children born to Sarah Price 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.800 Williams and Daniel Hale Williams Junior, who was a barber. 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.680 The family were Methodists, and they had white, Indigenous and 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:28.040 African ancestry. Sarah's mother had been enslaved on the same 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:32.000 plantation in Maryland as Frederick Douglas, and she and Douglas 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:32.759 were cousins. 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.360 There's not a lot of detail recorded about the younger 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:42.000 Dan's earliest years, but in eighteen sixty seven, after the 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:46.040 Civil War, the family went to Annapolis, Maryland, where Sarah 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:47.080 had had family. 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:49.560 Traveling to Maryland. 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.440 Would not have been nearly as easy or possible before 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:55.920 that point. Not long after they got there, though, Dan's 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:59.640 father died of tuberculosis and Dan and his siblings were 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.240 split up. Dan's brother was the oldest, and he was 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:07.440 already in law school. Dan's two oldest sisters and their 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.280 mother all went to Illinois to live with relatives and 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:13.840 study hair dressing. Then the next two oldest sisters were 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.519 placed in a convent school, and the youngest sister stayed 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:21.720 with Dan's grandmother. Dan was pulled out of school and 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:24.520 sent to Baltimore to live with a family friend and 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.360 trained to be a shoemaker. Various accounts of all of 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:32.480 this are pretty uncharitable toward Dan's mother. Although they were 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.160 not rich, there were businessmen and landowners on both sides 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:40.240 of the family, so Sarah did have some financial resources 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:43.320 that she may have been able to draw on. At 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:45.520 the same time, though she had gotten married at the 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:48.960 age of fifteen, and without a husband, she didn't have 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.480 a way to support herself and her children. It is 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:56.480 absolutely reasonable that Dan would have felt abandoned. He was 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.919 only eleven years old. But at the same time, it's 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:02.480 seems like Sarah may have just been trying to do 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:06.680 her best in some very difficult circumstances. Yeah, without like 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:11.799 some specifics, I really could not tell whether there were 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:16.919 legitimate criticisms of how she handled things or if people 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:22.560 were just being really judgy. Dan's feelings might also have 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:25.240 been influenced by the fact that he did not like 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:30.840 making shoes. He was not enjoying this apprenticeship at all. Eventually, 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.359 he talked one of his late father's friends into giving 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:36.000 him a railroad pass, and he used that to go 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:40.480 to Rockford, Illinois, where his mother and sisters were. Later on, 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:42.520 he told a niece that when he got there at 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.560 the age of only twelve, his mother told him that 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.920 he seemed to have enough spunk to take care of himself. 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.080 You could read that as impressed with what he had done, 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.440 or as kind of flippant, and I don't really know 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:59.480 which way she meant that. Sarah later moved again, leaving 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.800 Dan and one of his sisters in Illinois with their cousins. 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.000 Dan and his sister moved around a bit over the 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:08.640 next few years, eventually making their. 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.320 Way to Wisconsin. Dan wanted to be in school and 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.840 he liked learning, but they also needed money. He learned 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.000 to be a barber like his late father, and he 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:22.239 worked part time while living in Edgerton, Wisconsin. He left 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:27.040 school without graduating after a series of respiratory illnesses. He 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.040 wanted to finish his education, though, so he later enrolled 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:34.400 in a private school called the Classical Academy in Janesville, Wisconsin, 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:38.320 which was run by a doctor, Hayre. Dan paid his 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:42.279 way by working part time at Charles Henry Anderson's Tonsorial 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:45.640 parlor and bathing rooms, and Dan and his sister also 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:49.839 boarded with the Andersons. As I understand it, the Andersons 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.279 were the only black family in the neighborhood. 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:55.440 As we said, there's not a lot. 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:59.520 Of concrete detail about William's earlier years, but he did 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:04.880 have some experiences with racism, while living in Wisconsin. Williams 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:09.360 had light skin and reddish hair, and while he identified 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:12.080 himself in the parlance of the time as a Negro, 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:17.200 people did not always immediately recognize that about him. At 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.479 one point, the parents of another student at the Classical 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:24.560 Academy threatened to withdraw their daughter because they did not 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:28.720 want her to attend school with a black student. Doctor 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:32.160 Hare's response to this was to offer to return her tuition. 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:37.520 Dan also had a relationship, or perhaps just a flirtation, 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.240 with a young white woman named Ida Williams. They were 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:45.560 not related, She was another student at Classical Academy, and 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:48.360 it seems like she was more serious about him than 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.360 he was about her. When her parents learned about the relationship, 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:55.800 her father casually dropped that he was thinking of sending 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:59.720 her and her sister to public school. Ida seems to 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.120 have read between the lines that this was really about 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:05.159 getting her away from Dan, and soon she was courting 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:08.120 a white man named Jim Lord, who she later married. 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:11.719 Aida and Dan kept in touch, though, and much later on, 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.520 when her son was sick, Williams performed surgery on him, 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:17.640 and he did not charge Aida for it. 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.520 In addition to going to school and working at the 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:25.680 Tomsorial Parlor, Williams learned to play the fiddle and played 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:29.159 with the Harry Anderson Orchestra and the Unitarian Church that 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:33.039 he joined. After he graduated from the classical academy, he 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:36.760 started law school, following the footsteps of his older brother, 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:41.159 who was now a successful lawyer. When Williams decided he 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:44.400 didn't like law, he changed courses and he got an 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:48.120 apprenticeship with doctor Henry Palmer, who was a very well 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:52.360 respected doctor and former Surgeon General of Wisconsin. 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:56.719 While medical schools did exist in the US by this point, 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.600 it was more common for people to at least start 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:04.000 their metal education as an apprentice. Palmer was a little 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:06.560 reluctant to take Williams on at first because of his 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:10.240 short time studying law. Palmer wanted to make sure that 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.880 Williams was actually committed to medical study and wasn't going 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:18.920 to just switch tracks again. Palmer also accepted to other apprentices, 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.840 Frank Pember and James S. Mills, which allowed all three 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.360 of them to study at the same time and for 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.560 Palmer to run his clinic twenty four hours a day. 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.120 After a two year apprenticeship, all three of them went 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:38.400 to Chicago Medical School, which later became Northwestern University Medical School. 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.800 They all started in eighteen eighty and due to some 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:45.120 kind of a miscommunication, they all got there a week early. 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:48.200 They showed up at the school and the only person 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.040 there was the janitor, who gave them a tour of 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:54.560 the building and some tips about the unwritten rules of 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:59.080 etiquette among the students, like as first years, they should 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:01.920 not take the good seats in the operating theater when 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.600 they were watching procedures. Williams really struggled to pay for 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:10.600 medical school. He lived with a widowed family friend known 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:14.000 as missus John Jones. Her late husband had been a 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.840 friend of his late father. This was less expensive than 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.920 other housing options, but he still didn't have a lot 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.120 of money. He cut hair and he played music, but 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:28.360 medical school required most of his time and attention. He 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:30.600 wrote to his mother for help, and she said she 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.160 didn't have any money to give him, but that she 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:37.280 had made some loans to other people. She suggested that 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.320 he try to collect on their notes, which immediately proved 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:44.760 to be impossible, and then he wound up taking loans 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:50.040 from other people, including his former mentor Harry Anderson. While 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:54.120 Williams was in medical school, an outbreak of smallpox struck 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:58.760 the city of Chicago. Edward Jenner had started really publicizing 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:02.360 the smallpox vaccine more than eighty years before this, but 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:07.200 vaccination hadn't completely become a routine practice yet. As a 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.400 medical student working with patients, Williams was exposed and contracted 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:16.000 smallpox himself. He had some scars alongside his nose afterward, 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:20.319 but beyond that he recovered. While Williams was a student, 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:24.000 the medical school became connected to Saint Luke's Hospital, and 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:27.760 he started doing some clinical work there. The hospital was 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:32.360 employing Joseph Lister's techniques for antiseptic surgery, which Lister had 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:36.640 started publishing in the late eighteen sixties. This included using 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:41.319 carbolic acid to kill pathogens on instruments and services and 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:45.040 on surgeon's hands, as well as a carbolic acid spray 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.760 to kill pathogens in the air around the patient. This 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:52.520 was also fairly early in the development of modern anesthesia. 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:57.120 While alcohol, opium, and other substances had been used earlier 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:01.040 on in history, gases like nitrous oxide, t ether, and 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.440 chloroform had come into use in the mid nineteenth century. 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:09.040 The methods of delivering these gases weren't always efficient, though, 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.520 so the operating theater could be filled with a haze 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:16.840 of carbolic acid and the gas used to anesthetize the patient. 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:23.040 Williams graduated from medical school in eighteen eighty three. Initially, 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.800 he planned to move closer to where his mother was living, 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.120 so he applied for a license to practice medicine in Washington, 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.079 d c. But then he changed his mind and he 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:35.080 decided to stay in Chicago, so he applied for a 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:39.400 license to practice in Illinois as well. He established his 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.480 own practice, and he started working to pay back all 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:45.440 the money he had borrowed to go to medical school. 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:47.800 Which he was able to do, but it was. 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:50.360 Difficult since the United States was in the middle of 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:52.040 a huge economic downturn. 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:55.720 He also built a life for himself in the city. 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.839 He lived and practiced medicine in a multiracial neighborhood and 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:04.560 taught as an anatomy demonstrator at Chicago Medical College. He 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:09.080 enjoyed opera and attended All Souls Unitarian Church. He also 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.680 joined a Republican organization called the Hamilton Club, where he 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.800 was one of just a few black members. While he 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:18.480 was still in school, the people in his community had 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:22.119 gotten to know him as Dan, not as doctor Williams, 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:24.800 and some of them really struggled to start referring to 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:28.800 him in this more formal way, So before long he 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.000 was just known as doctor Dan. We'll talk about doctor 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:46.000 Dan's early medical career. After a sponsor break, after finishing 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.800 medical school, Daniel Hale Williams was hired as part of 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:54.320 the staff at south Side Dispensary. The dispensaries of this 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:57.160 era were walk in clinics that were meant for people 0:11:57.200 --> 0:12:01.160 who couldn't afford to see a private doctor. They were 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:05.880 often funded by churches and charitable organizations, or sometimes they 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.120 were part of the hands on training for medical students. 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:14.760 He was able to do very minor outpatient surgical procedures 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:17.880 at the dispensary, but he really wanted to be able 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:22.160 to do surgeries that were more involved than that. None 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.320 of the hospitals in Chicago would grant surgical privileges to 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:30.120 a black doctor, though, so he did these surgeries in 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:34.560 his patients' homes. He followed antiseptic procedures as much as 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:37.840 he could in a home environment, including doing things like 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:41.439 baking the patient's bedsheets in the oven to use them 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.680 as surgical drapes. As he got himself established as a 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:49.720 doctor and surgeon, Williams became the first black surgeon to 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:53.160 be hired by the City Railway Company, and in eighteen 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:56.960 eighty nine he accepted an unpaid two year appointment to 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:00.520 the Illinois State Board of Health. His appointment it was 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.400 renewed two years later, but ended after it wasn't renewed 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.680 a third time following the election of a new governor. 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.520 During these years, Williams fell in love with a woman 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.880 named Kitty May Black, who had a similar multi racial 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:19.720 ancestry to his own, but since she had very light skin, 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.400 her parents really wanted hur to marry someone white, and 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:27.360 they arranged for her to marry a white lawyer. Williams 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:31.000 was really heartbroken about this, and even more so after 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.600 she died of a sudden illness a few years later, 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:36.520 with her friends saying it had not seemed like she 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:41.760 wanted to survive. After this, Williams really threw himself into 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:45.560 his work. While Williams had not been kept out of 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:48.920 medical school because of his race, at this point, there 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.760 were no nursing schools in Chicago that were accepting black students. 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:57.080 In December of eighteen ninety, the Reverend Lewis Reynolds, pastor 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.800 of Saint Stephen's African Methodist Church, a pro coached Williams 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.160 on behalf of his sister, Emma. Emma had come to 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:06.960 Chicago to live with her brother and to learn to 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:10.000 be a nurse, but every nursing school in the city 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:12.320 had turned her down because she was black. 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:17.679 This was still really early in the development of nursing 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:22.720 as a professionalized field. The first nursing school in the 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:26.280 United States had been established less than twenty years before this, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:30.880 in eighteen seventy two. Before this, people who worked as 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:34.440 nurses had often been through some kind of informal or 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.720 on the job training, or sometimes they were people who 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.600 were helping to take care of the sick and injured 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.560 without really a lot of training or education in that 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:47.240 at all. A lot of the nurses that were working 0:14:47.440 --> 0:14:51.640 were really dedicated and knowledgeable. But the field of medicine 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:55.720 was rapidly becoming a lot more complex. There were all 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:59.800 kinds of new developments in things like infection control, anesthesia, 0:14:59.880 --> 0:15:05.400 and surgery, so hospitals and medical practices were also seeing 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:09.880 a need for nurses that had a more formal, broader education. 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.880 Williams had patients who were recovering from surgery at home 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:19.520 or living at home with chronic or progressive conditions, and 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:23.560 they needed nurses, and those nurses needed to have specific skills. 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:26.800 He also knew that some of his black patients really 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.680 would not be comfortable in the care of a white nurse, 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.760 that they didn't know if he could even find a 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:36.720 white nurse willing to do the job. So simultaneously, he 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.560 thought no one should be denied in education in nursing 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.560 because of their race, and that there was a need 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:48.120 for black nurses specifically, and another need was running alongside 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:52.120 that one. There was only one hospital in Chicago that 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:56.360 would admit black patients. That was Cook County Hospital on 0:15:56.400 --> 0:16:00.240 the west side. Williams was living and working on the 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.520 city's south side, and the black members of his community 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.920 just didn't have a hospital nearby that they could go to. 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:10.400 He realized that he could try to fill all of 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:14.480 these gaps at once, establishing a hospital that would accept 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.760 patients regardless of their race, which would also be a 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.240 place to train black nurses, and it would be a 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.880 place where black doctors and surgeons could work since they 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.080 were being barred from existing hospitals because of their race 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:32.800 as well. With the help of churches and community organizations, 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.520 Williams and the Reverend Reynolds started raising money. People held 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.440 bake sales and also donated furniture and other items from 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.160 their own homes for use in the hospital. Several white 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:50.720 industrialists became major financial backers, including George Pullman and Cyrus McCormick. 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:55.400 This wasn't just about philanthropy, but also making sure their 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:58.960 black employees had access to medical care so that they 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.040 could recover from ill lists and injuries and get back 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:06.080 to work. Armor Meat Packing Company provided the down payment 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:11.960 for the hospital building. Williams faced some fierce disagreement from 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:16.119 people who did not support his plans to open a hospital, 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.720 and a lot of that disagreement came from within the 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:24.159 black community. His critics argued that he was reinforcing racial 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:30.320 segregation at a time when Chicago was becoming increasingly racially segregated. 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.240 They thought he should instead be focused on fighting segregation 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:38.359 at the hospitals and nursing schools that already existed instead. 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:43.320 In spite of that opposition, articles of incorporation were filed 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:47.400 for a twelve bed facility called Provident Hospital and Training 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:52.640 School Association on January twenty third, eighteen ninety one, and 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.640 staffing turned out to be a challenge. The nursing program 0:17:56.760 --> 0:18:00.159 was overwhelmed with one hundred and seventy five applications for 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.920 its eighteen month training program, but only seven of them 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:09.200 were accepted, including Emma Reynolds. Williams wanted applicants who were 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:14.159 quote fairly educated, as well as being prompt, neat, and organized. 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:17.000 They had to have a gentle voice and a patient temper, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:19.280 and he felt that a lot of the applicants just 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:23.040 did not meet those criteria, and because black doctors and 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.399 surgeons had been excluded from a lot of medical programs 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.800 and from working at other hospitals, he also had trouble 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.320 finding top tier doctors and surgeons who were also black. 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.359 The hospital did open its doors, though, and it was 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:42.359 integrated for both patients and staff. The surgical ward was 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:45.400 always very busy, treating a lot of people who worked 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:49.080 in Chicago's stockyards and railroads who had been injured on 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:52.640 the job. The hospital and the nursing school both did 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.640 really well, although they did face some serious financial issues 0:18:56.720 --> 0:19:00.560 during the Panic of eighteen ninety three. Pent the hospitals 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:05.000 survived this financial crisis, largely thanks to Frederick Douglas, who 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:09.040 raised money for it during the Chicago World's Fair. On 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.879 July ninth, eighteen ninety three, a man named James Cornish 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:16.480 was stabbed in a fight and brought to Provident Hospital. 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.200 They didn't have the knife and he couldn't really describe it, 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.320 and X rays and other imaging techniques had not been 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.840 invented yet, so it wasn't really clear exactly how deep 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:32.040 the wound was from the outside, though it looked relatively shallow. 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:37.920 Cornish was admitted for observation, and overnight he started experiencing 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:43.280 increasing pain and showing signs of shock. Williams thought that 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.560 he might be bleeding internally or having some other more 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:50.679 serious issue, and the only way to tell was to 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:55.679 open his chest to look. Williams invited six surgeons to 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:58.639 observe this, four of them white and two of them black. 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:04.720 Williams made an incision between Cornish's ribs, essentially extending the 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:08.960 edges of the stab wound. Then he lifted the intercostal 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:11.959 cartilage like a trap door to see what was underneath. 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.440 He could see that the knife had damaged the left 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:20.320 internal memory artery, it had also penetrated through the pericardium 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.640 that's the sack that surrounds and protects the heart, and 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:29.639 into the heart muscle itself. First, Williams repaired the damage 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:33.119 to that artery. Then he irrigated the wounds to the 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:38.440 pericardium and heart with saline. The heart muscle wasn't hemorrhaging, 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.159 and he left that part of the injury alone. He 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.760 used forceps to hold the damaged edges of the pericardium 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:48.719 and he sutured them together, and once he had done that, 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:53.359 he closed all of his incisions. Williams did all of 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:55.399 this without a lot of the tools that would be 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.040 used for this kind of surgery today. In addition to 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:02.280 the lack of X ray and other imaging, antibiotics and 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:07.040 anticoagulants had not been invented yet. Neither had rib spreaders 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.000 or tools for keeping a patient's airway open while they 0:21:10.000 --> 0:21:15.080 were anesthetized. Obviously, neither had heart bypass machines that allow 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:19.679 surgeons to stop a person's heart during surgery today. So 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:22.840 Williams was doing this surgery as the heart was beating 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:27.200 and the edges of the torn pericardium were continually fluttering. 0:21:28.320 --> 0:21:31.520 In addition to carrying out this procedure on a beating 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:36.040 heart with very basic tools, Williams was also doing something 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:41.399 that most of the surgical community thought was impossible. Williams 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:44.880 had read a paper that had theorized about a surgical 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.760 repair to the pericardium while he was in medical school, 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:52.480 but that surgeon had not actually tried to perform one. Really, 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:56.359 most surgeons in Europe and North America believed that even 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.199 trying to explore a beating heart was likely to just 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:04.080 kill the patient. German surgeon Theodore bill Roth, who is 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:08.800 sometimes called the founder of abdominal surgery, was quoted as saying, quote, 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:12.040 any surgeon who would attempt to suture a wound of 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:15.840 the heart is not worthy of the serious consideration of 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:20.280 his colleagues. The common course of treatment for an injury 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:25.000 like Cornish's was cold rest and opium, and not surgery. 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:30.360 Cornish survived this surgery. A few days later, The Chicago 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.480 Daily inter Ocean reported on it, describing it as a 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:38.879 marvelous surgical operation and an astonishing feat. Twenty one days 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:43.680 into Cornish's recovery, he developed cardiac tampanaud or, a build 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:47.439 up of fluid in his pericardium, and Williams performed another 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:51.119 procedure to remove it through a needle. He did know 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.840 about earlier attempts to remove excess fluid from the pericardium, 0:22:54.960 --> 0:23:00.720 although without today's imaging technologies that was extremely risky. Cornish 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:05.400 was discharged from the hospital after fifty one days. Williams 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.040 searched through medical literature to see if he could find 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:11.560 evidence of another surgeon having done something similar, and he 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.840 came up with nothing. After following up with Cornish three 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:18.919 years later and confirming that he was alive and in 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.359 good health, Williams wrote up a paper on the surgery, 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:24.919 and that was published in the Medical Record in eighteen 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:30.160 ninety seven. Although it was initially hailed as a first, 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:34.119 it was later discovered that doctor Henry Dalton had published 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:37.199 on a similar procedure in the Annals of Surgery in 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:38.760 eighteen ninety one, and there. 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:43.640 Were also some other even earlier examples of similar procedures. 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:47.480 By the time his paper was published, Williams had moved 0:23:47.520 --> 0:23:50.840 on from Provident Hospital, and we'll get to that after 0:23:50.880 --> 0:24:04.920 a sponsor break. Not long after his surgery on James Cornish, 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.720 Daniel Hale Williams was appointed to the position of surgeon 0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:13.239 in chief at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, d C. The 0:24:13.240 --> 0:24:17.520 federal government had established Freedman's Hospital in eighteen sixty two, 0:24:18.080 --> 0:24:20.760 and in eighteen sixty eight it had also become a 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:26.160 teaching hospital for Howard University Medical School. As chief surgeon, 0:24:26.320 --> 0:24:29.960 that would also make Williams a professor of surgery at Howard. 0:24:31.000 --> 0:24:35.959 Williams was really reluctant to leave Provident Hospital, but he 0:24:36.000 --> 0:24:39.760 apparently changed his mind after a conversation with Secretary of 0:24:39.800 --> 0:24:40.879 State Walter Q. 0:24:41.119 --> 0:24:41.600 Gresham. 0:24:42.400 --> 0:24:46.200 Gresham told him quote, if it's service to your race, 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:49.920 you're thinking of Freedman's needs, you more than Provident from 0:24:50.000 --> 0:24:55.119 all I hear. William's start date was unfortunately delayed by 0:24:55.160 --> 0:24:59.000 an accident. While out quail hunting, he was shot in 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:02.359 the foot. He developed an infection, and for a while 0:25:02.440 --> 0:25:04.840 it looked like his leg might have to be amputated. 0:25:05.720 --> 0:25:08.159 Once Williams was well enough to return to work, he 0:25:08.320 --> 0:25:12.679 was months later than planned and really still recovering. He 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:16.400 had also been targeted by a smear campaign by another surgeon, 0:25:16.680 --> 0:25:19.760 George Cleveland Hall, who seems to have had a grudge 0:25:19.760 --> 0:25:23.159 against Williams after Williams didn't back him for an appointment 0:25:23.480 --> 0:25:29.840 at Provident Hospital. William's predecessor at Friedman's Hospital was Charles 0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:33.440 Burley Purvis, who had been the hospital's surgeon in Chards 0:25:33.560 --> 0:25:36.960 for over a decade. Purvis had also served in the 0:25:37.119 --> 0:25:40.360 Union Army during the Civil War and had been one 0:25:40.359 --> 0:25:44.280 of the founders of Howard Medical School. But a lot 0:25:44.520 --> 0:25:48.040 had changed in the world of medicine over all those years, 0:25:48.640 --> 0:25:52.280