Watch this video excerpt about the history of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams is the Official Father of Open Heart / Cardiac Surgery
What you should know...
- On January 23, 1891 Daniel Hale Williams helped establish the interracial hospital, Provident Hospital and Training School Association; where he trained black nurses and employed doctors of all races.
- Dr. Daniel Hale Williams is the first person to perform an open-heart surgery.
- Dr. Williams was also the first surgeon to open the chest cavity successfully without the patient dying of infection
- On July 9, 1893, Dr. Williams successfully performed open heart surgery on a young Black man named James Cornish, who was injured in a bar fight and stabbed in the chest with a knife.
- 51 days later James Cornish walked out of Dr. Williams' Provident Hospital fully recovered and went on to live another 50 years.
- He was known for his professionalism and insistence on upstanding sanitation and operating procedures
- In 1902, he performed another breakthrough operation, successfully suturing a patient's spleen
- Williams' Provident Hospital had an 87% success rate in its first year of operation.
