Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Dr. Daniel Hale Williams About this episode Dr. Daniel Hale Williams is often described as the first person to successfully perform an open-heart surgery. That's not entirely accurate, but he was still a surgical innovator, and he was also a huge part of the Black Hospital Movement.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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0:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Workplace chaos. We've all been there. Deadlines are slipping, projects are piling up, and suddenly you realize the missing piece is the right person. That's when you say, this is a job for sponsored jobs. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job post gets a boost so you can connect with quality candidates faster. In fact, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs.
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1:42 Holly Frey? We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.
2:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:29 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Today, we are going to talk about Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who's often described as the first person to successfully perform an open-heart surgery. That's not completely correct. There were some other earlier open-heart procedures, but he was still a surgical innovator at a time when the field of surgery was not nearly as advanced as it is today. And he was also a huge part of the Black hospital movement. That was in the, pretty much, the first half of the 20th century. Opening hospitals for Black patients when a lot of the US medical system was racially segregated.
3:12 Tracy V. Wilson? And in a lot of places, Black patients did not have anywhere they could receive care.
3:17 Holly Frey? Daniel Hale Williams III, known as Dan, was born on January 18, 1856, in Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of seven children born to Sarah Price Williams and Daniel Hale Williams Jr., who was a barber. The family were Methodists, and they had white, indigenous, and African ancestry. Sarah's mother had been enslaved on the same plantation in Maryland as Frederick Douglass, and she and Douglas were cousins.
3:47 Tracy V. Wilson? There's not a lot of detail recorded about the younger Dan's earliest years, but in 1867, after the Civil War, the family went to Annapolis, Maryland, where Sarah had had family. Traveling to Maryland would not have been nearly as easy or possible before that point. Not long after they got there, though, Dan's father died of tuberculosis, and Dan and his siblings were split up. Dan's brother was the oldest, and he was already in law school. Dan's two oldest sisters and their mother all went to Illinois to live with relatives and study hairdressing. Then the next two oldest sisters were placed in a convent school, and the youngest sister stayed with Dan's grandmother.
4:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Dan was pulled out of school and sent to Baltimore to live with a family friend and train to be a shoemaker.
4:40 Holly Frey? Various accounts of all of this are pretty uncharitable toward Dan's mother. Although they were not rich, there were businessmen and landowners on both sides of the family, so Sarah did have some financial resources that she may have been able to draw on. At the same time, though, she had gotten married at the age of 15, and without a husband, she didn't have a way to support herself and her children. It is absolutely reasonable that Dan would have felt abandoned. He was only 11 years old, but at the same time, it seems like Sarah may have just been trying to do her best in some very difficult circumstances.
5:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, without like some specifics, I really could not tell whether there were legitimate criticisms of how she handled things, or if people were just being really judgy. Dan's feelings might also have been influenced by the fact that he did not like making shoes. He was not enjoying this apprenticeship at all. Eventually, he talked one of his late father's friends into giving him a railroad pass, and he used that to go to Rockford, Illinois, where his mother and sisters were. Later on, he told a niece that when he got there, at the age of only 12, his mother told him that he seemed to have enough spunk to take care of himself.
6:03 Tracy V. Wilson? You could read that as impressed with what he had done, or as kind of flippant, and I don't really know which way she meant that. Sarah later moved again, leaving Dan and one of his sisters in Illinois with their cousins.
6:17 Holly Frey? Dan and his sister moved around a bit over the next few years, eventually making their way to Wisconsin. Dan wanted to be in school, and he liked learning, but they also needed money. He learned to be a barber like his late father, and he worked part-time. While living in Edgerton, Wisconsin, he left school without graduating after a series of respiratory illnesses. He wanted to finish his education, though, so he later enrolled in a private school called the Classical Academy in Janesville, Wisconsin, which was run by a Dr. Hare.
6:51 Holly Frey? Dan paid his way by working part-time at Charles Henry Anderson's tonsorial parlor and bathing rooms, and Dan and his sister also boarded with the Andersons.
7:00 Tracy V. Wilson? As I understand it, the Andersons were the only black family in the neighborhood. As we've said, there's not a lot of concrete detail about Williams' earlier years, but he did have some experiences with racism while living in Wisconsin. Williams had light skin and reddish hair, and while he identified himself in the parlance of the time as a Negro, people did not always immediately recognize that about him. At one point, the parents of another student at the Classical Academy threatened to withdraw their daughter because they did not want her to attend school with a black student. Dr. Hare's response to this was to offer to return her tuition.
7:45 Holly Frey? Dan also had a relationship, or perhaps just a flirtation, with a young white woman named Ida Williams. They were not related. She was another student at Classical Academy, and it seems like she was more serious about him than he was about her. When her parents learned about the relationship, her father casually dropped that he was thinking of sending her and her sister to public school. Ida seems to have read between the lines that this was really about getting her away from Dan, and soon she was courting a white man named Jim Lord, who she later married. Ida and Dan kept in touch, though, and much later on, when her son was sick, Williams
8:27 Holly Frey? performed surgery on him, and he did not charge Ida for it.
8:31 Tracy V. Wilson? In addition to going to school and working at the tonsorial parlor, Williams learned to play the fiddle and played with the Harry Anderson Orchestra and the Unitarian Church that he joined. After he graduated from the Classical Academy, he started law school, following in the footsteps of his older brother, who was now a successful lawyer. When Williams decided he didn't like law, he changed courses and he got an apprenticeship with Dr. Henry Palmer. He was a very well-respected doctor and former surgeon general of Wisconsin.
9:06 Holly Frey? While medical schools did exist in the US by this point, it was more common for people to at least start their medical education as an apprentice. Palmer was a little reluctant to take Williams on at first because of his short time studying law. Palmer wanted to make sure that Williams was actually committed to medical study and wasn't going to just switch tracks again. Palmer also accepted two other apprentices, Frank Pember and James S. Mills, which allowed all three of them to study at the same time and for Palmer to run his clinic 24 hours a day.
9:43 Tracy V. Wilson? After a two-year apprenticeship, all three of them went to Chicago Medical School, which later became Northwestern University Medical School. They all started in 1880, and due to some kind of a miscommunication, they all got there a week early. They showed up at the school and the only person there was the janitor, who gave them a tour of the building and some tips about the unwritten rules of etiquette among the students. Like, as first years, they should not take the good seats in the operating theater when they were watching procedures.
10:17 Holly Frey? Williams really struggled to pay for medical school. He lived with a widowed family friend known as Mrs. John Jones. Her late husband had been a friend of his late father. This was less expensive than other housing options, but he still didn't have a lot of money. He cut hair and he played music, but medical school required most of his time and attention. He wrote to his mother for help, and she said she didn't have any money to give him, but that she had made some loans to other people. She suggested that he try to collect on their notes, which immediately proved to be impossible. And then he wound up taking loans from other people, including his former mentor, Harry Anderson.
11:03 Tracy V. Wilson? While Williams was in medical school, an outbreak of smallpox struck the city of Chicago. Edward Jenner had started really publicizing the smallpox vaccine more than 80 years before this, but vaccination hadn't completely become a routine practice yet. As a medical student working with patients, Williams was exposed and contracted smallpox himself. He had some scars alongside his nose afterward, but beyond that, he recovered.
11:32 Holly Frey? While Williams was a student, the medical school became connected to St. Luke's Hospital, and he started doing some clinical work there. The hospital was employing Joseph Lister's techniques for antiseptic surgery, which Lister had started publishing in the late 1860s. This included using carbolic acid to kill pathogens on instruments and surfaces and on surgeons' hands, as well as a carbolic acid spray to kill pathogens in the air around the patient. This was also fairly early in the development of modern anesthesia. While alcohol, opium, and other substances had been used earlier on in history, gases
12:12 Holly Frey? like nitrous oxide, ether, and chloroform had come into use in the mid-19th century. The methods of delivering these gases weren't always efficient, though, so the operating theater could be filled with a haze of carbolic acid and the gas used to anesthetize the patient.
12:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Williams graduated from medical school in 1883. Initially, he planned to move closer to where his mother was living, so he applied for a license to practice medicine in Washington, DC. But then he changed his mind, and he decided to stay in Chicago, so he applied for a license to practice in Illinois as well. He established his own practice, and he started working to pay back all the money he had borrowed to go to medical school, which he was able to do, but it was difficult since the United States was in the middle of a huge economic downturn. He also built a life for himself in the city. He lived and practiced medicine in a multiracial neighborhood and taught as
13:14 Tracy V. Wilson? an anatomy demonstrator at Chicago Medical College. He enjoyed opera and attended All Souls Unitarian Church. He also joined a Republican organization called the Hamilton Club, where he was one of just a few Black members. While he was still in school, the people in his community had gotten to know him as Dan, not as Dr. Williams, and some of them really struggled to start referring to him in this more formal way. So before long, he was just known as Dr. Dan. We'll talk about Dr. Dan's early medical career after a sponsor break.
13:52 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
13:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
14:15 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
14:23 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
14:30 Speaker 04 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
14:35 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
14:39 Speaker 04 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
14:43 Speaker 03 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
14:47 Tracy V. Wilson? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
14:49 Speaker 05 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
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15:59 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but
16:44 Holly Frey? to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
17:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual- Someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only
17:48 Tracy V. Wilson? gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
18:08 Tracy V. Wilson? After finishing medical school, Daniel Hale Williams was hired as part of the staff at Southside Dispensary. The dispensaries of this era were walk-in clinics that were meant for people who couldn't afford to see a private doctor. They were often funded by churches and charitable organizations, or sometimes they were part of the hands-on training for medical students. He was able to do very minor outpatient surgical procedures at the dispensary, but he really wanted to be able to do surgeries that were more involved than that. None of the hospitals in Chicago would grant surgical privileges to a black doctor, though.
18:51 Tracy V. Wilson? So, he did these surgeries in his patients' homes. He followed antiseptic procedures as much as he could in a home environment, including doing things like baking the patient's bed sheets in the oven to use them as surgical drapes.
19:06 Holly Frey? As he got himself established as a doctor and surgeon, Williams became the first black surgeon to be hired by the City Railway Company. And in 1889, he accepted an unpaid, two-year appointment to the Illinois State Board of Health. His appointment was renewed two years later, but ended after it wasn't renewed a third time following the election of a new governor.
19:31 Tracy V. Wilson? During these years, Williams fell in love with a woman named Kitty Mae Black, who had a similar multiracial ancestry to his own. But since she had very light skin, her parents really wanted her to marry someone white, and they arranged for her to marry a white lawyer. Williams was really heartbroken about this, and even more so after she died of a sudden illness a few years later, with her friends saying it had not seemed like she wanted to survive. After this, Williams really threw himself into his work.
20:06 Holly Frey? While Williams had not been kept out of medical school because of his race, at this point, there were no nursing schools in Chicago that were accepting Black students. In December of 1890, the Reverend Lewis Reynolds, pastor of St. Stephen's African Methodist Church, approached Williams on behalf of his sister Emma. Emma had come to Chicago to live with her brother and to learn to be a nurse, but every nursing school in the city had turned her down because she was Black.
20:36 Tracy V. Wilson? This was still really early in the development of nursing as a professionalized field. The first nursing school in the United States had been established less than 20 years before this in 1872. Before this, people who worked as nurses had often been through some kind of informal or on-the-job training, or sometimes they were people who were helping to take care of the sick and injured without really a lot of training or education in that at all. A lot of the nurses that were working were really dedicated and knowledgeable, but the field of medicine was rapidly becoming a lot more complex.
21:18 Tracy V. Wilson? There were all kinds of new developments in things like infection control, anesthesia, and surgery. So hospitals and medical practices were also seeing a need for nurses that had a more formal, broader education.
21:34 Holly Frey? Williams had patients who were recovering from surgery at home, or living at home with chronic or progressive conditions. And they needed nurses, and those nurses needed to have specific skills. He also knew that some of his black patients really would not be comfortable in the care of a white nurse that they didn't know, if he could even find a white nurse willing to do the job. So simultaneously, he thought no one should be denied an education in nursing because of their race, and that there was a need for black nurses specifically.
22:08 Tracy V. Wilson? And another need was running alongside that one. There was only one hospital in Chicago that would admit black patients. That was Cook County Hospital on the west side. Williams was living and working on the city's south side, and the black members of his community just didn't have a hospital nearby that they could go to. He realized that he could try to fill all of these gaps at once. Establishing a hospital that would accept patients regardless of their race, which would also be a place to train black nurses, and it would be a place where black doctors and surgeons could work, since they were being barred from existing hospitals because of their race as well.
22:52 Holly Frey? With the help of churches and community organizations, Williams and the Reverend Reynolds started raising money. People held bake sales and also donated furniture and other items from their own homes for use in the hospital. Several white industrialists became major financial backers, including George Pullman and Cyrus McCormick. This wasn't just about philanthropy, but also making sure their black employees had access to medical care so that they could recover from illnesses and injuries and get back to work. Armor Meat Packing Company provided the down payment for the hospital building.
23:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Williams faced some fierce disagreement from people who did not support his plans to open a hospital. And a lot of that disagreement came from within the Black community. His critics argued that he was reinforcing racial segregation at a time when Chicago was becoming increasingly racially segregated. They thought he should instead be focused on fighting segregation at the hospitals and nursing schools that already existed instead.
24:02 Holly Frey? In spite of that opposition, articles of incorporation were filed for a 12-bed facility called Providence Hospital and Training School Association on January 23, 1891. And staffing turned out to be a challenge. The nursing program was overwhelmed with 175 applications for its 18-month training program, but only seven of them were accepted, including Emma Reynolds. Williams wanted applicants who were, quote, "fairly educated" as well as being prompt, neat, and organized. They had to have a gentle voice and a patient temper, and he felt that a lot of the applicants just did not meet those criteria. And because Black doctors and surgeons
24:46 Holly Frey? had been excluded from a lot of medical programs and from working at other hospitals, he also had trouble finding top-tier doctors and surgeons who were also Black.
24:57 Tracy V. Wilson? The hospital did open its doors, though, and it was integrated for both patients and staff. The surgical ward was always very busy, treating a lot of people who worked in Chicago's stockyards and railroads who had been injured on the job. The hospital and the nursing school both did really well, although they did face some serious financial issues during the panic of 1893. Providence Hospital survived this financial crisis largely thanks to Frederick Douglass, who raised money for it during the Chicago World's Fair.
25:32 Holly Frey? On July 9th, 1893, a man named James Cornish was stabbed in a fight and brought to Providence Hospital. They didn't have the knife, and he couldn't really describe it, and x-rays and other imaging techniques had not been invented yet, so it wasn't really clear exactly how deep the wound was. From the outside, though, it looked relatively shallow.
25:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Cornish was admitted for observation, and overnight, he started experiencing increasing pain and showing signs of shock. Williams thought that he might be bleeding internally, or having some other more serious issue, and the only way to tell was to open his chest to look. Williams invited six surgeons to observe this, four of them white and two of them black.
26:22 Holly Frey? Williams made an incision between Cornish's ribs, essentially extending the edges of the stab wound. Then, he lifted the intercostal cartilage like a trapdoor to see what was underneath. He could see that the knife had damaged the left internal mammary artery. It had also penetrated through the pericardium, that's the sac that surrounds and protects the heart, and into the heart muscle itself.
26:49 Tracy V. Wilson? First, Williams repaired the damage to that artery. Then he irrigated the wounds to the pericardium and heart with saline. The heart muscle wasn't hemorrhaging, and he left that part of the injury alone. He used forceps to hold the damaged edges of the pericardium, and he sutured them together. And once he had done that, he closed all of his incisions.
27:14 Holly Frey? Williams did all of this without a lot of the tools that would be used for this kind of surgery today. In addition to the lack of x-rays and other imaging, antibiotics and anticoagulants had not been invented yet. Neither had rib spreaders or tools for keeping a patient's airway open while they were anesthetized. Obviously, neither had heart bypass machines that allow surgeons to stop a person's heart during surgery today. So Williams was doing this surgery as the heart was beating, and the edges of the torn pericardium were continually
27:49 Tracy V. Wilson? fluttering. In addition to carrying out this procedure on a beating heart with very basic tools, Williams was also doing something that most of the surgical community thought was impossible. Williams had read a paper that had theorized about a surgical repair to the pericardium while he was in medical school, but that surgeon had not actually tried to perform one. Really, most surgeons in Europe and North America believed that even trying to explore a beating heart was likely to just kill the patient. German surgeon Theodor Billroth, who is sometimes called the founder of abdominal surgery,
28:30 Tracy V. Wilson? was quoted as saying, quote, "Any surgeon who would attempt to suture a wound of the heart is not worthy of the serious consideration of his colleagues." The common course of treatment for an injury like Cornish's was cold, rest, and opium, and not surgery. Cornish survived this surgery. A few days later, the Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean reported on it, describing it as a marvelous surgical operation and an astonishing feat. 21 days into Cornish's recovery, he developed cardiac tamponade, or a buildup of fluid in his pericardium, and Williams performed another procedure to remove it through a needle.
29:13 Tracy V. Wilson? He did know about earlier attempts to remove excess fluid from the pericardium, although without today's imaging technologies, that was extremely risky. Cornish was discharged from the hospital after 51 days. Williams searched through medical literature to see if he could find evidence of another surgeon having done something similar, and he came up with nothing. After following up with Cornish three years later and confirming that he was alive and in good health, Williams wrote up a paper on the surgery, and that was published in the medical record in 1897. Although it was initially hailed as a first, it was later discovered that Dr. Henry Dalton
29:56 Tracy V. Wilson? had published on a similar procedure in the Annals of Surgery in 1891, and there were also some other, even earlier, examples of similar procedures. By the time his paper was published, Williams had moved on from Providence Hospital, and we'll get to that after a sponsor break.
30:18 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
31:01 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
31:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
32:07 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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34:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Not long after his surgery on James Cornish, Daniel Hale-Williams was appointed to the position of Surgeon-in-Chief at Friedman's Hospital in Washington, DC.
34:20 Tracy V. Wilson? The federal government had established Freedman's Hospital in 1862. And in 1868, it had also become a teaching hospital for Howard University Medical School. As chief surgeon, that would also make Williams a professor of surgery at Howard. Williams was really reluctant to leave Provident Hospital, but he apparently changed his mind after a conversation with Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham. Gresham told him, quote, "If it's service to your race you're thinking of, Freedman's needs you more than Provident, from all I hear."
34:58 Holly Frey? Williams' start date was unfortunately delayed by an accident. While out quail hunting, he was shot in the foot. He developed an infection, and for a while, it looked like his leg might have to be amputated. Once Williams was well enough to return to work, he was months later than planned and really still recovering. He had also been targeted by a smear campaign by another surgeon, George Cleveland Hall, who seems to have had a grudge against Williams after Williams didn't back him for an appointment at Provident Hospital.
35:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Williams' predecessor at Freedman's Hospital was Charles Burley Purvis, who had been the hospital's surgeon in charge for over a decade. Purvis had also served in the Union Army during the Civil War and had been one of the founders of Howard Medical School, but a lot had changed in the world of medicine over all those years. And Williams' perception was that Purvis and the hospital had just not kept up with those changes. Purvis later alleged that he had been replaced because of politics.
36:07 Holly Frey? When Williams started, Freedman's Hospital was organized into three general wards: one for men, one for women, and one for labor and delivery. The nursing staff was mostly made up of people who had not been through formal training, meaning they also didn't have the kind of experience or skills that Williams thought was necessary. He also found the hospital's surgical mortality rate of almost 10% to be unacceptable.
36:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Williams reorganized the hospital into departments. I used all the modern terms for these departments today. They were general medicine, surgery, gynecology, obstetrics, dermatology, urology, and pulmonology. He also established an ambulance service, which was essentially a delivery wagon that could bring patients to the hospital. He replaced the nursing staff and updated surgical techniques and antiseptic procedures. In addition to recruiting new medical and surgical staff, he also granted surgical privileges to some of the area's best surgeons. Soon, the surgical mortality rate at the hospital had dropped to 1.5%.
37:20 Holly Frey? Williams also wanted Freedman's Hospital to be seen as a highly respected and cutting-edge facility, which meant getting the public to trust the abilities of Black surgeons. To that end, he offered lectures and demonstrations at the hospital, including opportunities for the public to observe surgical procedures in the operating theater.
37:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Williams resigned from Freedman's Hospital in 1898 after about five years. The hospital was still under the control of the Department of the Interior, and that meant that it was often in the crosshairs of various political squabbles. An investigation into charitable institutions in Washington DC, including the hospital, had also started in 1896, and Purvis had been trying to get reinstated to his position. Williams was accused of financial mismanagement, but the reason he gave for leaving was that he was just tired of all the politics.
38:21 Holly Frey? That same year, at the age of 42, Williams married 39-year-old Alice Johnson, who was the daughter of American artist Moses Jacob Ezekiel, who was Jewish and a formerly enslaved woman. Alice was a teacher and a graduate of Howard University, who had remained single after an ugly breakup when she was much younger. She didn't want to wear white for her wedding because her mother had recently died. So instead she wore a navy blue suit. Dan's friend Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote a poem to commemorate his marriage titled To Dan. That poem started, "Step me now, a bridal measure. Work give way to love and leisure. Hearts be free and hearts be gay.
39:04 Holly Frey? Dr. Dan doth wed today." They moved back to Chicago and they had one child together who sadly died at birth.
39:13 Tracy V. Wilson? A congressional report about Friedman's Hospital was released after Dan and Alice had gotten married. And it detailed a lot of issues at the hospital. A lot of those issues, though, were ones that Williams had reported to the Department of the Interior, but which had not been dealt with. The report recommended huge cuts to the staff, including to the nursing staff, and it described Howard Medical School as, quote, "encroaching on the hospital."
39:41 Holly Frey? There were some newspapers that defended Williams after this report was released, and others that attacked him. He was questioned about his work, including a lot of questions about hospital spending. This included very specific questions about transactions that had happened years before, the sale of two cameras that he said were his personal property, but that were implied to have really belonged to the government, and how much was spent on various equipment that was both expensive and useless if it was damaged or worn. This has to have been frustrating considering that he brought a lot of his own equipment with him when he started working at the hospital, because the hospital didn't have it. And a lot of that equipment, he never got back.
40:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, some of these questions were like questions about purchases of needles from 1894 or something. And he was like, "How do you expect me to know this?"
40:34 Holly Frey? There's a stationary invoice.
40:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Back in Chicago, Williams went back to working at Providence Hospital, which had moved to a new 65-bed location. George Cleveland Hall was now on the board there, and there continued to be a lot of friction between him and Williams. Williams also started writing to Booker T. Washington, trying to get a teaching hospital established at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute had been founded in 1881. Booker T. Washington seems to have thought a hospital would be taking on too much too fast and put the institute at risk. But Williams thought there was an obvious need for one. In addition to thinking it was critical to training doctors,
41:23 Tracy V. Wilson? he had seen Black patients who had come all the way from Alabama trying to get access to medical care. Washington eventually stopped answering Williams' letters, and Williams later learned that Washington had also been getting a lot of letters from George Cleveland Hall. There seems to have just been a lot of animosity between the two of them.
41:45 Holly Frey? In 1899, George Hubbard, president and dean of Maheri Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, contacted Williams about conducting surgical clinics at the college. Maheri is a historically Black medical school founded in 1876. But at the time, it wasn't connected to a teaching hospital. Williams' first clinic was held in a cramped room. And afterward, he stressed that the only way for doctors and surgeons to really excel or even to be truly ready to practice medicine and surgery was to have the opportunity for hands-on instruction and practice at a teaching hospital. He was quoted as saying,
42:26 Holly Frey? "We can't sit any longer idly and inanely deploring the existing conditions. We must start our own hospitals and training schools."
42:36 Tracy V. Wilson? In January of 1900, Williams returned to Nashville to give a lecture on this subject at the Phyllis Wheatley Club. He advocated for every city in the South with a population of more than 10,000 black people to have its own black hospital with an attached nursing training school. This would provide hospitals that would accept black patients and places for black doctors and surgeons to work. He talked about how to get such a hospital started by renting a house with 10 or 12 rooms, preferably with a basement, furnishing it modestly so that it would be easy to clean, and hiring a level-headed graduate nurse to act as the superintendent, and then appointing
43:20 Tracy V. Wilson? the best physicians that could be found to work there.
43:24 Holly Frey? Then he passed on something Frederick Douglass had written to him in a letter in 1894. Quote, "The only way you can succeed is to override the obstacles in your path. Hope will be of no avail. By the power that is within you, do what you hope to do."
43:41 Tracy V. Wilson? A teaching hospital was established in Nashville that September. Williams continued to hold his annual surgical clinics there, and they were described as the highlight of every year for the medical students. He was paid only a travel stipend, and he donated that back to Mahary. A lot of the time, he was doing surgeries that the students really didn't have other opportunities to see. They were often very complicated or uncommon procedures. He was known for operating incredibly skillfully and also very quickly, given the limitations of general anesthesia at the time.
44:20 Holly Frey? He was also continually pushing himself as a surgeon, and he was also breaking new ground in the field. In 1902, he became one of the first surgeons to successfully repair a traumatic hemorrhage in a spleen. At the time, it was more common to remove the spleen than to try to repair it. There had been at least one successful surgical spleen repair before this, but Williams did not know about it.
44:47 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1912, while he was still working at Providence Hospital, Williams also became associate attending surgeon at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago. But the following year, he resigned from Providence. There are kind of multiple conflicting stories about why. One is that Providence's board passed a policy that surgeons who worked at Providence could only work at Providence. That was a policy that was probably written to target Williams, and it might also have been connected to the ongoing animosity with George Cleveland Hall. It's also possible that Williams felt like Providence was no longer really aligned with his original vision for it.
45:32 Tracy V. Wilson? He had established it in order to train Black nurses and to provide a place that would accept Black patients and where Black doctors could work. He had also helped to establish the National Medical Association, since Black doctors were being excluded from the American Medical Association. But he had wanted Providence to specifically be integrated and to provide connections between the white and Black medical communities in Chicago. Over time, Providence's staff had become less and less integrated and more predominantly Black, and that was part of an increasing pattern of racial segregation in Chicago more generally.
46:13 Holly Frey? Williams kept working at St. Luke's, as well as teaching and consulting. Former students and colleagues would write to him for help and advice. And sometimes, when his former students' patients did not have access to a hospital that would admit them, he would still perform surgery in their homes. He also continued to advocate for the establishment of Black-owned hospitals that would benefit Black patients and doctors alike. He helped establish at least 40 hospitals that were open to Black patients. In 1913, Williams also became the only Black founding member of the American College of Surgeons, which got its second Black member 21 years later.
46:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Dan's wife, Alice, developed Parkinson's disease and died in 1924. They were married until her death, but their relationship had become more strained after Dan had an affair years before.
47:10 Holly Frey? Daniel Hale Williams moved to Northern Michigan. In 1926, he was partially paralyzed after a stroke. He died on August 4th, 1931, at the age of 75, and he was buried in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.
47:26 Tracy V. Wilson? He had become known as an advocate for medical and nursing training and medical care for black people and for being an incredibly talented surgeon who charged people what they could afford to pay him. He took risks and he attempted surgeries that he didn't know of anybody else trying before, and he had a reputation for going to great lengths to try to treat people's limbs rather than amputating them. But he also did not do surgeries if he knew that they would not be successful, and he didn't give people treatments that he didn't think they needed. If he decided someone was too sick or too badly injured to survive a surgery, he would stay with them until they died. In the words of biographer Helen Buckler,
48:11 Tracy V. Wilson? quote, "It was as though in the sick room, and only in the sick room could Dr. Dan be a whole man, a man of feeling as well as a man of science and intellect. Here, emotions buried deep by pride and circumstance were set free."
48:28 Holly Frey? Providence Hospital moved into a much bigger building on East 51st Street in 1933. This was followed by construction of an outpatient building, and two apartment buildings were purchased as housing for nursing students. But the hospital faced periods of financial struggle, especially in times of more widespread economic downturns. This included serious financial problems in the 1980s, and the hospital was closed in 1987. It was acquired by the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 1991 and reopened in 1993. It is now Providence Hospital of Cook County in Chicago and is affiliated with Loyola University's Stritch School of Medicine.
49:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Most of the hospitals that were established during the Black Hospital Movement closed or merged with other hospitals after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid the following year. Hospitals accepting Medicare and Medicaid funding were required to comply with the Civil Rights Act's outlawing of racial discrimination. This was a huge part of desegregating the medical system. Desegregation gave Black patients access to care that they might not have been able to access otherwise, but the loss of these hospitals could also be devastating to the communities where they had been operating.
49:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Many of them were major employers in their neighborhoods and also sources of civic pride and just major community resources. And of course, the desegregation of the medical system in the US did not eliminate medical racism, and there are ongoing disparities in access to medical care and outcomes across a lot of the country today. And that is Daniel Hale-Williams.
50:20 Holly Frey? Do you also have some listener mail for us?
50:23 Tracy V. Wilson? I do have listener mail. This is from Caitlin, who wrote, "Hi, Tracy and Holly. I'm always delighted by the unearthed episodes, and this set was no exception. I especially appreciated the 'Let's recreate this artifact from antiquity to see if we can use it as hypothesized item variety.' How do I get a job chucking a javelin from various heights on a scissor lift? I'm a grad student who teaches undergrads as part of my program, and this semester I'm leading a historical research methodology course where we're showing students how to do archival research by working on a group project. Coincidentally, the day before the first class, an interstate construction project turned up an archaeologically significant find,
51:08 Tracy V. Wilson? a series of privy pits. Their thought to date to the construction of the Erie Canal. The archaeologist interviewed for the article I read was so incredibly excited about the chance to learn from the unearthed artifacts that had been rescued before the construction resumed."
51:25 Tracy V. Wilson? I shared this with my students as an example of how local history can be. I waxed rhapsodic about the potential discoveries for a few moments before one of my students raised his hand and said, wait, isn't a privy just a toilet? What's important about poop? Bless his heart, he didn't know how deep my repertoire of factoids and tidbits on latrines, privies, septic systems, dumps, and so on is. Thanks, Unearthed. Thank you, as always, for all you do. I look forward to the new episodes every week and am constantly re-listening to favorites from the back catalog. Best, Caitlin. Thank you so much, Caitlin, for this email. And thank you for your past emails. Caitlin is another frequent correspondent.
52:10 Tracy V. Wilson? And I loved this bit about the privies. The discoveries I thought of first connected to the privies were the ones that we've talked about that are all about how the Roman Empire was full of parasites. And wherever the Romans went, they took the parasites with them.
52:29 Holly Frey? Riddled with worms, those Romans.
52:34 Tracy V. Wilson? I also think in earlier years of doing Unearthed, we had a lot of discoveries that came from middens, which were basically trash dumps. And I don't think I can remember a very recent midden discovery. Maybe there has been, I don't know. But anyway, thank you again, Caitlin, for this email. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're at [email protected] . And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.
53:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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53:59 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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