DANIEL HALE WILLIAMS

First Open Heart Surgeon

Daniel Hale Williams was born in Hollidaysburg, PA, in 1856, the fifth of seven children. His father was a "free Negro" barber in Hollidaysburg, and his mother was part Indian and a relation to the famous Frederick Douglass. His father died when Dan was 11, and the family was split apart. His three older sisters were sent to live with relatives in Boston, his mother (Sarah) took the younger children to Rockford, IL with other relatives, and Dan was sent to Baltimore apprenticed to a shoemaker. His older brother had already gone to Philadelphia and was practicing law.

Dan soon found that he did not like the shoemaking trade, and wrote to his mother for permission to come live with her. Later, when his mother decided to move to Baltimore, Dan and a sister, Sally, decided to stay behind, then moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, where he worked as a barber and she as a manicurist while they finished high school. Then Dan got accepted to Janesville Academy, similar to a two-year college. He wasn't sure what he wanted to become, but felt that education was the key to his success.

After much consideration, he decided that the medical field appealed to him. Making people feel good made him feel good, and managed to get himself apprenticed to Dr. Henry Palmer, a local and distinguished doctor. After two years of apprenticeship, he needed to get his formal training. Dr. Palmer insisted on the best in the midwest - Chicago Medical College - even though Dan had no money. But with borrowed money and a room with an friend of his parents', he was able to start. He had three challenging years ahead of him with teachers like Robert Koch, a future Nobel Prize-winner, but he worked hard and succeeded, receiving his M.D. from Chicago Medical College, affiliated with Northwestern University, in 1883.

Williams went first to Washington, D. C., as it seemed a good place for a Negro doctor, but soon moved back to Chicago. He got an appointment at the South Side Dispensary, where he could practice medicine and surgery, and was an anatomy instructor for Northwestern University Medical School. In 1891 he started a new hospital, the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, specifically to give good treatment to Negroes, something not usually found in those days. It was here, on a July day in 1893, that a man was brought in with a stab wound to his chest. Though it had never been done before, Dr. Williams operated on the man, stitching up the heart itself! Dr. Williams was not looking for fame or trying to do something new and special, he just did what he had to do to save the man's life. The young man recovered from this amazing surgery, and Williams became known as the first person to ever perform open heart surgery.

Williams became Surgeon in Chief at the Freemen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he was the first to separate departments based on treating specific conditions: Medical, Surgical, Gynecological , Obstetrical, Dermatological, Genito-Urinary, and Throat and Chest. In 1913, he was the only African-American in a group of 100 charter members of the American College of Surgeons, and later helped found and became the first vice-president of the National Medical Association, at that time the only such organization. .Dr. Williams had a brilliant career in medicine, but history shall remember him as the brilliant surgeon who led the way into this special field of medicine. He suffered a stroke in 1926 and retired, passing away in 1931.