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Daniel Hale Williams, c. 1900

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 - August 4, 1931) was a bi-racial American surgeon.^[1] Williams is known today for performing an early surgery on the pericardium, repairing a knife wound with the use of sutures.

Daniel Hale Williams was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, to Daniel and Sarah Price Williams. He began his medical career in the office of Surgeon General Henry Palmer in Janesville, Wisconsin.

In 1883, Williams graduated from the Chicago Medical College, today known as Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

In 1893 Dr. Williams repaired the torn pericardium of James Cornish, who had suffered a knife wound to the heart. This is the second repair of a wound to the pericardium on record, the first having been performed by Dr Henry Dalton ^[2]. Even earlier successful pericardial surgeries were performed in the early 19th century by Francisco Romero, a Spanish surgeon, and Napoleon's physician, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey[1].

Most experts do not consider operations on the pericardium to be true open heart surgery, as the pericardium is the sac surrounding the heart, and not the organ itself. Widespread reports (see e.g. [2]) then, that Williams performed the "first open heart surgery" are spurious.

He was subsequently appointed during the administration of President Grover Cleveland as Surgeon-in-Chief of Freedman's Hospital in Washington, DC. In addition to organizing the hospital, Dr. Williams also established a training school for African-American nurses at the facility.

Dr. Williams was a teacher of Clinical Surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee and was an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He worked hard to create more hospitals for African Americans. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for black doctors, and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only black in the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Williams died of a stroke on August 4, 1931 in Idlewild, Michigan.

In 1898, Dr. Williams married Alice Johnson, illegitimate daughter of the American Jewish sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel and a mulatto maid. ^[3].

1. ^ http://famous.adoption.com/famous/williams-daniel-hale.html
2. ^ Schumacker, H.B., Evolution of Cardiac Surgery, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
3. ^ http://www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.9/html/396.html

• Beatty, William K., Williams, Daniel Hale, American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
• Yenser, Thomas (editor), Who's Who in Colored America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Persons of African Descent in America, Who's Who in Colored America, Brooklyn, New York, 1930-1931-1932 (Third Edition)
• Harlan, et al (editors), Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 9, p.396

• The Provident Foundation
• Did Daniel Hale Williams really perform the first successful heart surgery?