African-American physician Daniel Hale Williams was born January 18, 1858, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was a surgical pioneer who performed the first successful open-heart surgery.Williams worked his way through Janesville Classical Academy as a barber and bass violinist. In 1893, he received a medical degree from Chicago Medical College, now part of Northwestern University. While still a medical student, Williams founded Provident Hospital, the first Chicago hospital with Blacks on its staff. In 1897, a man was brought to Provident Hospital with a deep knife wound in his chest. Williams opened the man’s chest and observed that the knife had punctured the sac surrounding the heart. He repaired the tear, closed the chest, and the patient recovered fully.
Daniel Hale Williams was appointed to the staff of Chicago’s St. Luke’s Hospital in 1907, where he continued to practice surgery until his death. He became a charter member of the American College of Surgeons when it was founded in 1913, the first Black surgeon admitted to that organization. Daniel Williams died on August 4, 1931, in Idlewild, Michigan.
Reference:
The Life of Daniel Hale Williams
Judith Kaye
New York: Twenty-First Century Books, 1993