Black History Month

Americans know that February is Black History Month.  Most know that we celebrate Black History Month in February because it is the birth month of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States and issuer of the Emancipation Proclamation, and Frederick Douglass, one of the foremost leaders in the abolitionist movement.  Some may know that it was Dr. Carter G. Wilson who originated the concept in 1926 as Negro History Week, and that in early 1970's it was changed to Black History Week.  It was not until 1976 that we began observing Black History Month to recognize the African American race and to celebrate the impact it has had in history.  Superior Health, Inc. is taking pause today to honor three African American pioneers in the field of medicine.  
In chronological order, we begin with Dr. Daniel Hale Williams who in 1891 founded the first African American owned hospital.  According to Susan Robinson, author of A Day in Black History,  Dr. Williams observed that African American patients were routinely subject to second-class medical care. Also, opportunities for most Black physicians were extremely limited, and it was difficult for African Americans to gain admission to medical and nursing schools because of institutionalized racism. Dr. Williams met a young woman, Emma Reynolds, who had been refused admission by every nursing school in the area. This prompted him to launch a new venture, the first African American owned hospital in the United States. It started as a twelve-bed facility, named Provident Hospital. At Provident Hospital, Dr. Williams also opened the first nursing school for African Americans, where Emma Reynolds and six others made up the first graduating class. Dr. Williams employed African American and White doctors at Provident Hospital, emphasizing the need to provide the best available care to everyone. He required that the doctors at Provident keep abreast of the latest advances in medicine.  Two years later, in 1893, a young man named James Cornish was rushed to Provident Hospital with a stab wound to the chest. Doctors at this time did not have X-ray machines, and the doctors at Provident were unsure what to do for Mr. Cornish. His condition began to deteriorate; his pulse was getting weaker and he started to go into shock, which are signs of internal bleeding. In the operating room, Dr. Williams made the decision to open up Cornish's chest and see what could be done before he bled to death internally. The surgical team found a pierced blood vessel and a tear to the pericardium tissue around the heart. Dr. Williams sutured both of these injuries to stop the bleeding. James Cornish survived the operation. Newspaper headlines reported: "Sewed Up His Heart! Remarkable Surgical Operation on a Colored Man!" Cornish recovered and lived another twenty years. It was the first successful open heart surgery ever performed.
Our next honoree is Dr. Charles Richard Drew whose pioneer work in the field of blood transfusions led to the creation of the first Blood Bank.  Mary Bellis, in her Guide to Inventors, highlights that it was Charles Drew who during his work at Columbia University  made his discoveries relating to the preservation of blood. By separating the liquid red blood cells from the near solid plasma and freezing the two separately, he found that blood could be preserved and reconstituted at a later date.  Moreover, Charles Drew's system for the storing of blood plasma (blood bank) revolutionized the medical profession. Dr. Drew also established the American Red Cross blood bank, of which he was the first director.
Today's final honored pioneer is Dr. Alexa Canady who is credited as not only the first female, but also the first African American Neurosurgeon in the United States.  In 1976, Canady interned at New Haven Hospital, which was affiliated with Yale University, and then applied for a residency in neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota. She became the first black female to enter the field in American history. "When I got a residency in neurosurgery, I got it not because I'm smarter than somebody forty years ago, but because the politics were such that they needed a black woman and I was there and qualified," Canady said in I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed the World. "I had impeccable credentials coming out of medical school, but there was an undercurrent of, 'How can you, a black woman, have the audacity to want to do this? Don't you know that you've got a double whammy?'  Well, I came along at a time when it offered them a double positive. They could fulfill the quotas and say, 'I finished woman. I finished black, and all it took was one person instead of two.' So that became a positive for me."  From her residency at UM, Dr. Canady practiced at the University of Pennsylvania's Children's Hospital in pediatric neurosurgery.  Then in 1982 Dr. Canady moved on to practice at the Children's Hospital in Detroit, where in 1987 she became the Director of Neurosurgery.  In 2001 Dr Canady retired a legend, the first woman, the first African American to practice Neurosurgery in America.
We at SHI wish to thank Dr. Williams, Dr. Hale, and Dr. Canady for dreaming the dream and living the dream.  Let us be inspired by their ground-breaking work and their dedication to the field of medicine, as their works' impact is felt the medical community.