Celebrating Black Medical Pioneers

The CFC is celebrating Black History Month by highlighting black pioneers in the medical field who changed the landscape of modern medicine with their ingenuity and innovation! Can you imagine where we'd be today without these breakthroughs in technology and science?

Daniel Hale Williams

Completed the First Successful Open-Heart Surgery

In 1893 a young man in Chicago, named James Cornish was stabbed in the chest and was rushed to the hospital where Dr. Williams practiced. When Cornish began to go into shock Dr.Williams suspected a deeper wound near the heart. He opened Cornish's chest he found a damaged left internal mammary artery and repaired it. Dr. Williams then noticed further damage to the right coronary artery. With the heart still beating, Williams rinsed the wound with saline and sewed the wound shut. Cornish left the hospital 51 days later.

He went on to live 20 more years.

Henrietta Lacks

The First Immortalized Human Cell Line

In 1951, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. While undergoing treatment a sample of her cells was sent to Dr. Gey, a prominent cancer and virus researcher. Dr. Gey had collected cells from many patients with cervical cancer only to find the samples always died however, this wasn't true for Henrietta's cells, which doubled every 24 hours.

Today, These are known as "HeLa" cells (named from the first two letters of her first and last name) and are used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones, and viruses on the growth of cancer cells without experimenting on humans

Charles Drew

"Father of the Blood Bank"

In 1939, Charles Drew developed a new way to separate red blood cells from plasma. Prior to separation, complete blood was only able to be stored for a week. This made it difficult to keep a ready supply of each blood type for patients in need.With the ability to separate the components, the shelf life of blood increased to two months!

During WWII, Drew worked as the Medical Director for the Blood for Britain Campaign, the first nationwide campaign for blood collection which shipped plasma for war victims. After helping make the program a success, The Red Cross solicited Drew to start a new donation program that would include mobile donation centers and "bloodmobiles."