Daniel Hale Williams is an individual who made significant touches that changed the world of medicine and the fight for human rights. He opened the first non-segregated hospital in the United States, where everyone, regardless of race, had access to medical care. He also made a significant mark in medicine and surgery in 1893 by being the first surgeon to perform a successful heart surgery. His contributions reverberate through black history.
Williams was born on the 18th of January 1856 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, as the fifth child of black barber Daniel Williams Jr. and Sarah Price. After he lost his father to Tuberculosis around the age of ten, Daniel Hale Williams had to live with relatives because his mother could not cater to all her children effectively.
During this period, he worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Baltimore, Maryland, after which he went to join his mother again. Williams later moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, where he started a career as a barber, following his father’s path; here, he saw the way the local physicians worked, and he grew a strong desire in the field and made it his own path.
A people who don’t make provisions for their own sick and suffering are not worthy of civilization.
Daniel Hale Williams
In 1880, Williams gained admission to study medicine at the Chicago Medical College (now Northwestern University Medical School).
Upon graduation in 1883, he made another significant move that shaped African American history by establishing a private medical facility, Provident Hospital, which provided healthcare for black and white patients at a time when white doctors were the only ones permitted to work in private medical facilities.
This hospital became the first black-owned and interracial medical institution in the United States.
Williams became a teacher of Anatomy at his alma mater. He served as a surgeon to the City Railway Company, becoming the first African-American physician to work for the city’s street railway system. In 1889, the Governor of Illinois offered him an appointment to the state’s health board.
Willams made African-American history proud in 1893 when he operated on James Cornish, a man who was admitted to Provident Hospital in Chicago with a knife wound on his chest.
At this period, medical professionals considered operating on the heart too risky; however, this was when the change was about to happen, as Willams summoned the courage. Without antibiotics, enough anesthesia, and some other essential tools, he performed the surgery on Cornish and repaired the tear in the sac and the severed artery surrounding the heart. Cornish became well and lived for another 20 years.
This record-breaking move made Williams known as the first African-American doctor to perform a successful heart surgery.
Anything is possible when it’s done in love, and everything you can do should be in love, or it will fail
Daniel Hale Williams
He became a fellow of the American College of Surgeons during his lifetime. He received an honorary doctorate from Howard Wilberforce University for his extraordinary contribution to the medical community.
Williams died of a stroke on the 4th of August 1931 in Idlewild, Michigan. He received a lot of honors and recognition during his lifetime and even after his death.
Today, many schools and edifices are named after him: Williams Park in Chicago, Daniel Hale Williams Elementary in Gary, Indiana, Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine in Chicago, P.S. 307 Daniel Hale Williams in Brooklyn, etc.
Being the first person to establish a non-segregated hospital in the US performing the first successful heart surgery, Daniel Hale William’s contributions to Black history online continue to inspire and educate people today.