Dr. Daniel Hale Williams
January 18, 1856– August 4, 1931
The first open-heart surgery
The first African American cardiologist who performed the first successful open-heart surgery
Founded the first interracial hospital, Provident Hospital and Training School
Created two hospital-based training programs for nursing
Co-founded the National Medical Association
The first African American physician admitted to the American College of Surgeons
Dr. Williams’s work and advocacy for African Americans’ presence in medicine is honored by educational institutions worldwide
Williams was born in 1856 and raised in the city of Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. His father, Daniel Williams Jr., was the son of a Scots-Irish woman and a black barber. His mother, Sarah Price, was black American. His Williams family great grandfather was listed in the 1790 U. S. census for Philadelphia City, as ‘other free,’ a designation that included black Americans. The fifth born child, Williams lived with his parents, a brother and five sisters. His family eventually moved to Annapolis, Maryland. Shortly after when Williams was nine, his father died of tuberculosis. Williams’ mother realized she could not manage the entire family and sent some of the children to live with relatives. Williams was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Baltimore, Maryland but ran away to join his mother, who had moved to Rockford, Illinois. He later moved to Edgerton, Wisconsin, where he joined his sister and opened his own barber shop. After moving to nearby Janesville, Wisconsin, Williams became fascinated by the work of a local physician and decided to follow his path.
He began working as an apprentice to Henry W. Palmer, studying with him for two years. In 1880, Williams entered Chicago Medical College, now known as Northwestern University Medical School. His education was funded by Mary Jane Richardson Jones, a prominent activist and leader of Chicago’s black community.After graduation from Northwestern in 1883, he opened his own medical office in Chicago, Illinois.
When Williams graduated from what is today Northwestern University Medical School, he opened a private practice where his patients were white and black. Black doctors, however, were not allowed to work in America’s private hospitals.
As a result, in 1891, Williams founded the Provident Hospital, which also provided a training residency for doctors and training school for nurses in Chicago. This was established mostly for the benefit of African-American residents, to increase their accessibility to health care, but its staff and patients were integrated from the start.
In 1893, Williams became the first African American on record to have successfully performed pericardium surgery to repair a wound. On September 6, 1891, Henry Dalton was the first American to successfully perform pericardium surgery to repair a wound. Earlier successful surgeries to drain the pericardium, by performing a pericardiostomy were done by Francisco Romero in 1801 and Dominique Jean Larrey in 1810.
On July 10, 1893, Williams repaired the torn pericardium of a knife wound patient, James Cornish.Cornish, who was stabbed directly through the left fifth costal cartilage, had been admitted the previous night. Williams decided to operate the next morning in response to continued bleeding, cough and “pronounced” symptoms of shock. He performed this surgery, without the benefit of penicillin or blood transfusion, at Provident Hospital, Chicago. It was not reported until 1897. He undertook a second procedure to drain fluid. About fifty days after the initial procedure, Cornish left the hospital.
Dr. Williams Performs Open-Heart Surgery
On 7/9/1893, James Cornish was stabbed on the left side of his chest during an argument and was admitted to Provident Hospital in Chicago2. Initially, his wound was thought to be superficial, and he was observed overnight. However, the next day, it was discovered that Cornish’s pericardium (the tissue encasing the heart) was lacerated, and the heart muscle was punctured. Heart surgery was not an established field at the time, and it was thought that potentially fatal heart conduction problems could be caused by simple manipulation. However, on 7/10/1893, Dr. Williams closed the pericardium with fine catgut, a natural type of suturing material. Cornish remained in the hospital during his recovery, but on 8/3/1893, he appeared to be suffering from pericarditis with effusion (fluid). This can result from infection and/or inflammation and can be potentially life-threatening. Dr. Williams performed a pericardiocentesis, draining 80 ounces of fluid. Cornish was discharged from the hospital on 8/30/1893, and he lived until 19433, outliving Dr. Williams himself.
Dr. Williams published an account of this procedure in 1897, and for a time, it was thought that this was the first successful open-heart surgery because no other procedure had been recorded in the medical literature. Decades later, however, a woman name Helen Buckler wrote a biography of Dr. Williams, and through her research found that Dr. H. C. Dalton successfully performed a pericardial surgery in St. Louis in 1891, giving him cardiac operation priority3. However, that does not lessen the importance of what Dr. Williams did. “Here was a man called upon, without time for special preparation, to apply his surgical skill to a potentially fatal wound and about the most vital organ in the body. He did not hesitate, though he ventured where none had trod before.”
In 1893, during the administration of President Grover Cleveland, Williams was appointed surgeon-in-chief of Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., a post he held until 1898. That year he married Alice Johnson, who was born in the city and graduated from Howard University, and moved back to Chicago. In addition to organizing Provident Hospital, Williams also established a training school for African-American nurses at the facility. In 1897, he was appointed to the Illinois Department of Public Health, where he worked to raise medical and hospital standards.
Williams was a Professor of Clinical Surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and was an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He worked to create more hospitals that admitted African Americans. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for African-American doctors, and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only African-American doctor in the American College of Surgeons.
Williams was married in 1898 to Alice Johnson, natural daughter of the Jewish-American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and a biracial maid. His retirement home was in Idlewild, Michigan, a black community. His wife, Alice Johnson, died in 1924. Williams died in relative obscurity, of a stroke in Idlewild, Michigan on August 4, 1931. He was funeralized at St Anselm Catholic Church in Chicago and buried at Graceland Cemetary.
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Williams received honorary degrees from Howard and Wilberforce Universities, was named a charter member of the American College of Surgeons, and was a member of the Chicago Surgical Society.
A Pennsylvania State Historical Marker was placed at U.S. Route 22 eastbound (Blair St., 300 block), Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate his accomplishments and mark his boyhood home. His home in Chicago is now known as the Daniel Hale Williams House and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. His retirement home in Idlewild was given a historical marker by the state of Michigan in 2008. Several schools are named in his honor, including the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine in Chicago; Daniel Hale Williams Elementary in Gary, Indiana; P.S. 307 Daniel Hale Williams in Brooklyn; and M.S. 180 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams in the Bronx. Williams Park in Chicago is also named in his honor.