
…Due to the discrimination of the day, African-American citizens were still barred from being admitted to hospitals and black doctors were refused staff positions. Firmly believing this needed to change, in May 1891, Williams opened Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, the nation’s first hospital with a nursing and intern program that had a racially integrated staff. The facility, where Williams worked as a surgeon, was publicly championed by famed abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass.
On July 9th, 1893, an oppressively hot day, James Cornish had worked a long day and was too wound up to go straight home. James thought to stop at his favourite bar to unwind a bit, but, as will happen when the heat gets to people, a fight soon broke out, and Mr. Cornish had the bad luck to become embroiled in the brawl, causing him to end up with a knife in his heart!
Turns out it was Cornish’s lucky day, for he was taken to Provident Hospital and placed in the care of none other than our Dr. Dan. At first Cornish seemed to recover, but the next day he rapidly lost ground. Williams, despite having little medical equipment and no idea what was going on inside of Cornish’s chest, decided to be the first in the world to crack open a human chest and try to fix a human heart.
Williams found a tiny tear in the pericardium, the sac that surrounds the heart, and with just a few small stitches, was able to save the life of Mr. James Cornish! This with no X-rays, no antibiotics, no reliable anesthesia. Cornish spent fifty-one days in the hospital, but he lived. A surgery that had been inconceivable at the beginning of July was, by the end of September, a recognized medical possibility.
Source: Good People Doing Good Things Meets Black History Month — Dr. Dan | Filosofa’s Word
You must be logged in to post a comment.