Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Today we
Speaker 1: have the second episode in our not exactly a two
Speaker 1: parter about the development of a surgical treatment for blue
Speaker 1: babies that as children who have cionodic heart conditions, particularly
Speaker 1: to Trilogy of Felow. The earlier episode was on Dr
Speaker 1: Helen Tausig, and these two episodes are really pretty much
Speaker 1: stand alone. But Dr Tausig's name is going to come
Speaker 1: up a lot in this one and the like anatomical
Speaker 1: detail about what te Trilogy of Felow is we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. Um, I think you can understand the surgery
Speaker 1: without knowing all that detail. If you're like, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't listen to that one yet, It'll be okay.
Speaker 1: Today though, we're going to talk about surgery. Cool technician
Speaker 1: Vivian Thomas. Thomas was the one who really worked out
Speaker 1: how to do this surgery, and when Dr Alfred Blaylock
Speaker 1: performed it for the first time, Thomas was standing behind
Speaker 1: him walking him through it. Blaylock was the surgeon in
Speaker 1: chief at Johns Hopkins at this point, and Thomas's presence
Speaker 1: and the operating room was baffling or maybe even offensive
Speaker 1: to other observers. This was in nineteen forty four, and
Speaker 1: Thomas was a black man working at an institution whose
Speaker 1: only other black employees did janitorial work. He also had
Speaker 1: not ever attended medical school or even college. Also, Thomas's
Speaker 1: work that we're talking about today involved research on animals,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to have a ton of detail
Speaker 1: about that, but it isn't there. Vivian Theodore Thomas was
Speaker 1: born on August in Lake Providence, Louisiana. A lot of
Speaker 1: sources list his place of birth as New Iberia, and
Speaker 1: it is not entirely clear what is behind that discrepancy.
Speaker 1: The two cities are well over two hundred miles apart,
Speaker 1: and Thomas's autobiography says New Providence. His autobiography also says
Speaker 1: that he liked to joke that his parents named him
Speaker 1: Vivian because they thought they were going to have a girl.
Speaker 1: They had already had a daughter followed by two sons,
Speaker 1: and thought another daughter was on the way. Vivian's father, William,
Speaker 1: was a carpenter and his mother, Mary was a seamstress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know if he was named after
Speaker 1: anyone in particular, but that was a story he liked
Speaker 1: to tell. Uh. I'm not sure what his his parents
Speaker 1: thought of that story. When Vivian was to the family
Speaker 1: moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and as he got a little older,
Speaker 1: Vivian started helping his father with the carpentry business. In
Speaker 1: Vivian graduated with honors from Pearl High School, which was
Speaker 1: the only high school in the area that admitted black
Speaker 1: students and which also had just an excellent reputation. He
Speaker 1: dreamed of going to medical school, and in addition to
Speaker 1: his carpentry work for his father, he had taken a
Speaker 1: job as an orderly to try to earn enough money
Speaker 1: for it. Vivian also spent his summers doing maintenance work
Speaker 1: at Fisk University. Later in life, he described a formative
Speaker 1: experience he had at this job. After he replaced some
Speaker 1: worn out flooring, his foreman told him that his work
Speaker 1: was unacceptable. The foreman could still see where the repair
Speaker 1: had been made. Vivian did it over, and later his
Speaker 1: foreman pointed out that he could have just done it
Speaker 1: right the first time. Vivian really took this to heart
Speaker 1: and the fall of n Vivian, Thomas enrolled in the
Speaker 1: pre med program at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College, which
Speaker 1: is now Tennessee State University, the historically black Land Grant University.
Speaker 1: He hoped to go from there to Maharry Medical College
Speaker 1: following the nineteen ten release of the Flexner Report, which
Speaker 1: we talked about on the show earlier this year. This
Speaker 1: was one of only two remaining medical schools that accepted
Speaker 1: black students. But the Great Depression made Thomas's medical school
Speaker 1: aspirations in possible. The bank where he had deposited his
Speaker 1: savings closed and he lost it all. Carpentry work dried
Speaker 1: up as well, and he started working a collection of
Speaker 1: odd jobs just to try to make ends meet. In
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirty, Thomas asked his friend Charles man Love,
Speaker 1: who worked at Vanderbilt University, whether he knew of any
Speaker 1: job openings there, and man Love answered that he did
Speaker 1: know about a job assisting in a laboratory, but that
Speaker 1: the doctor running that lab, dr Alfred Blaylock, was, in
Speaker 1: his words, hell to work with. So for just a
Speaker 1: little on Blaylock, he had been born in Georgia in
Speaker 1: eight He attended Georgia Military Academy and served in the
Speaker 1: army during World War One before going on to the
Speaker 1: University of Georgia. From there, he studied medicine at Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins University. Blaylock was not a particularly great student, not bad,
Speaker 1: but also not exceptional. Consequently, he lost the general surgery
Speaker 1: residency that he wanted because his grades just weren't good enough,
Speaker 1: so Blaylock started a residency in neurology instead. After a while,
Speaker 1: he did manage to move back over to general surgery,
Speaker 1: but he had some kind of dispute with the other
Speaker 1: surgical residents and ultimately resigned. He wound up finishing his
Speaker 1: surgical residency at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, which is the
Speaker 1: place he described as a backwater. After he finished that residency,
Speaker 1: Blaylock continued to work at Vanderbilt. In addition to his
Speaker 1: work as a surgeon, he was researching the nature of shock.
Speaker 1: At the time, the prevailing theory was that shock brought
Speaker 1: on by trauma to the body was caused by toxins,
Speaker 1: and doctors did not really know how to treat it. So,
Speaker 1: after finding out about Vivian Thomas's background, including that he
Speaker 1: wanted to go to medical school, Blaylock hired him. Blaylock's
Speaker 1: research needed really careful monitoring, so he wanted somebody who
Speaker 1: could set up and monitor experiments in the lab while
Speaker 1: Blaylock was treating patients in the hospital. Blaylock described it
Speaker 1: to Thomas as wanting someone he could train to do
Speaker 1: anything that he could do, and maybe some things he couldn't.
Speaker 1: Thomas started this new job on February. The pay was
Speaker 1: twelve dollars a week. The previous summer, he had earned
Speaker 1: twenty dollars a week as a carpenter, so at first
Speaker 1: Thomas was a little reluctant. At the same time, he
Speaker 1: imagined that this was temporary. The carpentry jobs were going
Speaker 1: to come back with warmer weather in the spring, so
Speaker 1: he saw this is just something to carry him over.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, most of Blaylock's research was being conducted
Speaker 1: on dogs, and Thomas started out weighing them, taking measurements,
Speaker 1: anesthetizing them, preparing them for surgical procedures, monitoring them, and
Speaker 1: keeping records. But it quickly became clear that his abilities
Speaker 1: went beyond all that. He started learning to make incisions
Speaker 1: into suture, and Dr Joseph Beard, who was one of
Speaker 1: Blaylock's research fellows, tutored Thomas an anatomy, physiology, and chemistry.
Speaker 1: A couple of months into Thomas's work with Blaylock, he
Speaker 1: made some kind of error. By the time he wrote
Speaker 1: his autobiography many years later to describe this, he no
Speaker 1: longer remembered the details of exactly what he had done wrong,
Speaker 1: but when Blaylock discovered it, he was living shouting and
Speaker 1: swearing and what Thomas described as almost a temper tantrum
Speaker 1: full of foul language. After Blaylock left the room, Thomas
Speaker 1: asked one of the lab assistants how often that happened.
Speaker 1: The answer was any time Blaylock had previously had a
Speaker 1: bad night, meaning that he had drunk to excess. So
Speaker 1: Thomas went into Blaylock's office and told him that while
Speaker 1: he was doing his best, that he might make mistakes sometimes,
Speaker 1: and that he could not work for Blaylock if he
Speaker 1: was going to be spoken to that way every time
Speaker 1: it happened. Thomas went on to say that he had
Speaker 1: not been raised to use or to take that kind
Speaker 1: of language. Although the other assistants expressed some doubts that
Speaker 1: Blaylock's behavior would ever improve. Thomas said that he never
Speaker 1: faced this kind of an outburst from Blaylock. Again, just
Speaker 1: in case you're thinking, hey, wasn't this during prohibition, Yep,
Speaker 1: the answer was yes. Blaylock had an illicit keg of
Speaker 1: whiskey hidden in the lab, and eventually his and Thomas's
Speaker 1: relationship progressed to sometimes having a drink together, but they
Speaker 1: only socialized this way within the confines of the lab,
Speaker 1: always out of public view. By nineteen thirty three, Thomas
Speaker 1: had reached the point that he would prepare a dog
Speaker 1: for surgery and open and clothes, while Blaylock only did
Speaker 1: the actual surgical procedure that they were developing. And then
Speaker 1: this progressed to Thomas doing the surgical procedures himself from
Speaker 1: beginning to end. That started one day when Blaylock had
Speaker 1: asked for an animal to be prepared for surgery, but
Speaker 1: then he didn't arrive in the lab as expected. Thomas's
Speaker 1: work went way beyond what other technicians in the lab
Speaker 1: were typically doing. Blaylock would have an idea, Thomas would
Speaker 1: work out and document how to do it before teaching
Speaker 1: it to Blaylock and Blaylock relied on Thomas's work extensively.
Speaker 1: He published papers that were based on techniques that Thomas
Speaker 1: had develop, lipt and perfected, and he used data that
Speaker 1: Thomas had gathered. When drafting papers, Blaylock would call on
Speaker 1: Thomas to check his wording to make sure that what
Speaker 1: he was describing was accurate, since Thomas was the one
Speaker 1: who had the most thorough knowledge. In nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: Blaylock delivered a groundbreaking lecture on the nature of traumatic
Speaker 1: shock based on their work together. He connected shock to
Speaker 1: blood and fluid loss and described it as treatable with
Speaker 1: blood transfusions or plasma, or if neither of those was available,
Speaker 1: with sailing. That same year, Vivian Thomas married Clara Flanders.
Speaker 1: They would go on to have two daughters, Olga Fay
Speaker 1: born in nineteen thirty four and Theodosia, born in When
Speaker 1: the girls were still young, the family moved, and we're
Speaker 1: going to get into that after a sponsor break. The
Speaker 1: research that Alfred Blaylock, Vivian Thomas, and others in the
Speaker 1: research lab at Vanderbilt Wrede doing in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: and into nineteen forty led to life saving treatment for
Speaker 1: wounded soldiers during World War Two, but Thomas's contributions were
Speaker 1: really not acknowledged at the time. His pay was also
Speaker 1: low enough that he had some moonlight as a bartender
Speaker 1: to make ends meet. It's included at parties hosted by
Speaker 1: Dr Blaylock, where Thomas sometimes had to serve drinks to
Speaker 1: his colleagues from the lab. Over the years, the possibility
Speaker 1: of going to medical school faded away. Even after the
Speaker 1: end of the Great Depression. There just wasn't enough money
Speaker 1: to save for school while also supporting a family. Even
Speaker 1: though Thomas was doing the work of a senior research fellow,
Speaker 1: he was being paid and classified as a janitor. When
Speaker 1: Thomas realized this and asked for a raise, he was
Speaker 1: given one, but he wasn't sure if he was moved
Speaker 1: into a technicians position or if he was just being
Speaker 1: paid more and was still being listed as a janitor.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty seven, Blaylock was offered a job as
Speaker 1: chief of surgery at Henry Ford hosp Biddle in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and this would have been a huge step up for
Speaker 1: his career, But when Blaylock asked about bringing Thomas with
Speaker 1: him as his assistant, the hospital made it clear that
Speaker 1: it did not hire black people. Blaylock turned down the job,
Speaker 1: not because of any kind of sense of fairness, but
Speaker 1: because he knew that Thomas was critical to his work.
Speaker 1: In y eight, Blaylock and Thomas started researching pulmonary hypertension.
Speaker 1: Their experiment involved rerouting the blood flow around the pulmonary
Speaker 1: artery and back into the lungs. It did not work
Speaker 1: as they had hoped, but that will come up again
Speaker 1: later in the episode. In one, Blaylock was offered another job,
Speaker 1: this time at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, again as
Speaker 1: surgeon in chief. Once again, Blaylock asked about bringing Thomas
Speaker 1: with him as his assistant. Johns Hopkins only black employees
Speaker 1: at the time, we're working in janitorial roles, but they
Speaker 1: ultimately agreed, but Thomas wasn't sure that he wanted to go. Uh.
Speaker 1: It meant relocating his whole family from Nashville to Baltimore,
Speaker 1: the city that he had never been to and where
Speaker 1: they didn't know anybody. But it also seemed unlikely that
Speaker 1: he could find a job related to medicine without his
Speaker 1: connection to Blaylock, and with World War two looming, Thomas
Speaker 1: thought the job might offer him some protection if he
Speaker 1: were drafted, he might wind up in a medical unit. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Thomas did decide to go with Blaylock, and this move
Speaker 1: turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Blaylock
Speaker 1: had negotiated their salaries without a clear sense of how
Speaker 1: much more expensive Baltimore was than Nashville. It's affected both
Speaker 1: of them, obviously, but it affected Thomas, who was making
Speaker 1: a lot less money a lot more profoundly, and it
Speaker 1: turned out that Thomas's pay just was not enough to
Speaker 1: support his family. The two cities were also quite different
Speaker 1: for their black residents. In Nashville, the Thomas's had lived
Speaker 1: in a thriving black neighborhood with black owned businesses and
Speaker 1: a robust middle class, But most of Baltimore's black residents
Speaker 1: were living in overcrowded tenements and many were living in poverty.
Speaker 1: Thomas described many of the apartments he saw while looking
Speaker 1: for a place to live in the only neighborhoods where
Speaker 1: he would be allowed to live as barely fit for
Speaker 1: human habitation. JOHNS. Hopkins refused to increase Thomas's pay from
Speaker 1: what had originally been negotiated, so Blaylock convinced neurosurgeon Walter
Speaker 1: Dandy to make a gift to the medical school earmarked
Speaker 1: for Thomas's salary. That made Thomas's living situation more comfortable
Speaker 1: in terms of finances, but he was still having to
Speaker 1: face segregation and racism at work every day. Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: treated black patients, but they entered the facility through a
Speaker 1: separate door. Some departments had segregated wards and others saw
Speaker 1: black and white patients on different days of the week.
Speaker 1: Blood banks and morgues were also segregated by race. Also.
Speaker 1: I mean, as I mentioned earlier, the only other black
Speaker 1: employees there were doing things like janitorial work, and so
Speaker 1: after being openly stared at while walking through the building
Speaker 1: wearing his white lab coat, Thomas decided just not to
Speaker 1: wear it outside of the lab again. The lab was
Speaker 1: the old Hunterian laboratory, and it was also in disrepair.
Speaker 1: Thomas had to repaint, make repairs, and order new equipment
Speaker 1: before it was really workable. Once they were settled in Blaylock,
Speaker 1: and Thomas began working on finding ways to treat narrowed
Speaker 1: A orders in babies and children, including developing techniques to
Speaker 1: suiture blood vessels together in pediatric cardiologist Dr Helen Tausig
Speaker 1: approached Dr Blaylock about trying to find a surgical treatment
Speaker 1: for cyanotic heart disease or heart conditions that cause the
Speaker 1: skin in the mucus membranes to look blue because of
Speaker 1: a lack of oxygen. This is also known as blue
Speaker 1: baby syndrome. In particular, she was interested in a treatment
Speaker 1: for tetrology of follow and as we talked about in
Speaker 1: more detail on the episode on Tausig, this is a
Speaker 1: collection of four congenital malformations that causes blood to circulate
Speaker 1: through the body without carrying enough oxygen and with out treatment,
Speaker 1: about half of children born with tetrology of flow die
Speaker 1: before their third birthday, and the vast majority don't live
Speaker 1: to adulthood. There's a bit of debate about who came
Speaker 1: up with which piece of the idea for a surgical
Speaker 1: treatment for this condition. Various versions credit Blaylock, Tausig, and
Speaker 1: Dr Edwards Park, who was chief of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins,
Speaker 1: with specific details including which specific blood vessels to focus on,
Speaker 1: but it's generally agreed that Tausig suggested that Blaylock look
Speaker 1: for a surgical treatment for the tetrology of flow and
Speaker 1: that Thomas was the one who worked out the process,
Speaker 1: and I worked out the process. Blaylock and Thomas's attempts
Speaker 1: at inducing pulmonary hypertension provided a starting point. So first
Speaker 1: Thomas worked out how to surgically replicate a condition similar
Speaker 1: to tetrology of flow and dogs, and then he worked
Speaker 1: out how to connect the subclavian and pulmonary arteries, basically
Speaker 1: allowing more blood to travel back him too the lungs
Speaker 1: to pick up more oxygen. It took Thomas two years
Speaker 1: of work and hundreds of surgeries to perfect this process,
Speaker 1: starting on dogs and then moving on to human cadavers.
Speaker 1: Because there were no suturing needles small enough to work
Speaker 1: on the blood vessels of babies and small children, Thomas
Speaker 1: had to manually file them down from larger needles. He
Speaker 1: also had to improvise suturing silk, as no silk had
Speaker 1: been developed that was made specifically for working on blood vessels.
Speaker 1: In addition to all of that, there were worries about
Speaker 1: whether children who were sick enough to need this surgery
Speaker 1: could actually survive being anesthetized for it. Thomas felt pretty
Speaker 1: confident in the process that he had worked out by
Speaker 1: late nineteen and we will talk about the first time
Speaker 1: Blaylock performed it on a human patient after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Eileen Saxon was born August three, nineteen forty three, seven
Speaker 1: weeks before her mother was due to give birth, and
Speaker 1: she had tetrology of fellow by the age of fifteen months.
Speaker 1: Her prognosis was grave. She weighed only nine pounds, and
Speaker 1: she had spent several months living in an oxygen tent.
Speaker 1: So because this was a brand new surgery that had
Speaker 1: never been done on a living person, it was inherently
Speaker 1: incredibly risky. So the surgical team was looking for a
Speaker 1: patient who simply could not survive without it. Eileen fit
Speaker 1: that description. Blaylock and Tausig wanted to avoid pressuring Eileen's
Speaker 1: parents one way or another, but they also wanted them
Speaker 1: to be able to make an informed decision, so Blaylock
Speaker 1: and Tausig carefully explained what was involved in what the
Speaker 1: risks were, including showing Eileen's parents before and after diagrams.
Speaker 1: Eileen's parents ultimately agreed to the surgery, which was conducted
Speaker 1: on November twenty nine. Dr Blaylock was the surgeon and
Speaker 1: doctor Helen Tausig was also in the operating room. Standing
Speaker 1: behind Blaylock in just to his left was Vivian Thomas,
Speaker 1: who walked Blaylock through the surgery step by step. Thomas
Speaker 1: had not planned to attend the surgery at all, but
Speaker 1: Blaylock wound up sending for him. Blaylock had never actually
Speaker 1: done this procedure himself, he had seen Thomas do it.
Speaker 1: He had assisted Thomas on one surgery on a dog.
Speaker 1: There just had not been time for Blaylock to practice
Speaker 1: beyond that because Eileen's condition took a turn for the worst.
Speaker 1: Eileen survived this surgery, although the first published paper about
Speaker 1: it describes her post operative course as quote stormy. She
Speaker 1: was able to go home about two months later, although
Speaker 1: she died during a follow up surgery later on. In
Speaker 1: By that point, Blaylock had operated on two more human patients,
Speaker 1: on eleven year old girl on February three and a
Speaker 1: six and a half year old boy on February ten.
Speaker 1: They chose older patients because Eileen's blood vessels had just
Speaker 1: been so so tiny they were less than half the
Speaker 1: size of the dog's vessels that Thomas had developed this
Speaker 1: procedure on both these procedures were successful, though, and in
Speaker 1: the February tenth surgery, the patient's coloring dramatically shifted from
Speaker 1: blue to pink while he was still on the operating table,
Speaker 1: even though they had only done this surgery three times.
Speaker 1: By May of nineteen forty five, Blaylock and Tausig were
Speaker 1: confident enough in the results that they published a paper
Speaker 1: in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists,
Speaker 1: and people who were part of patients post operative care
Speaker 1: were mentioned in this article, but Vivian Thomas was not.
Speaker 1: By ninety six, medical professionals were calling this the Blaylock
Speaker 1: Tausig operation, or sometimes just the Blaylock operation. Within a decade,
Speaker 1: it was the standard treatment for tetrology of fellow, and
Speaker 1: it's possible that the success with the surgery saved Blaylock's career.
Speaker 1: He had a tempted several complicated surgeries, and the months
Speaker 1: leading up to all this, several of them had not
Speaker 1: gone very well, and his reliance on a black surgical
Speaker 1: technician had also raised some eyebrows. Basically before this, people
Speaker 1: had started to question his abilities, both as a surgeon
Speaker 1: and as the chief of surgery. But afterwards started to
Speaker 1: spread about the success of the Blaylock Tausig operation, new
Speaker 1: patients flooded Johns Hopkins so many that a portion of
Speaker 1: the children's surgical ward had to be designated the tet
Speaker 1: room for patients with tetrology of Felow and other cyonotic conditions.
Speaker 1: Vivian Thomas was present in the operating room for the
Speaker 1: first one hundred of these surgeries that Blaylock performed, advising
Speaker 1: him and correcting all kinds of details, like how big
Speaker 1: the sutures were, how far apart they were, and whether
Speaker 1: they were in the right direction. If anyone tried to
Speaker 1: stand behind and to the left of Blaylock, he would
Speaker 1: tell them that only Vivian was to stand in that spot.
Speaker 1: Over the course of six years, Blaylock performed this surgery
Speaker 1: one thousand times on children with several different syonotic heart conditions,
Speaker 1: about seventy five percent of them with tetrology of flow. So,
Speaker 1: as we noted earlier, John's Hopkins did treat black patients,
Speaker 1: but there were some racial disparities among the children that
Speaker 1: Blaylock treated for cyanotic heart conditions. Only a few of
Speaker 1: those first thousand patients were black. In nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: paper reporting the long term outcomes of these surgeries, Tausig
Speaker 1: attributed this to a collection of factors that affected black patients.
Speaker 1: The first was that cionosis was harder to see in
Speaker 1: patients who had darker skin. She also noted that doctors
Speaker 1: who were treating black patients might be less experienced, and
Speaker 1: that families involved might not have the means to pay
Speaker 1: for the operation or be aware of sources of funding
Speaker 1: that were available that might help them pay for it.
Speaker 1: In Thomas became lab supervisor. It had become something of
Speaker 1: a tradition to use the lab as a veterinary clinic
Speaker 1: on Friday afternoons, and after a while, Thomas became the
Speaker 1: go to veterinary surgeon for Johns Hopkins faculty and staff.
Speaker 1: The first dog to survive the blue baby procedure, a
Speaker 1: dog named Anna, also became something of a laboratory pet
Speaker 1: under Thomas's care and a public relations face for the hospital,
Speaker 1: which fased ongoing vocal criticism from anti vivisectionists for this work.
Speaker 1: In Thomas seriously considered leaving Johns Hopkins and moving back
Speaker 1: to Nashville. Demand for carpenters had really surged during the
Speaker 1: construction boom that followed World War Two, Thomas had the
Speaker 1: opportunity for far more lucrative work. Just before Christmas of
Speaker 1: that year, Blaylock presented him with an offer that would
Speaker 1: more than double his salary. After Thomas had already accepted it,
Speaker 1: Blaylock told him that was going to be the last
Speaker 1: conversation they would ever be having about his pay. Thomas
Speaker 1: said he would not have accepted that offer had he
Speaker 1: known about that condition. I think it's fair, that's absolutely fair.
Speaker 1: It kind of infuriates me. They went back and forth
Speaker 1: about it, with Blaylock going back to the Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: Board of Trustees, and in the end, a new salary
Speaker 1: bracket was created for people like Vivian Thomas, people who
Speaker 1: were in highly skilled, critically necessary positions but who didn't
Speaker 1: have degrees. Thomas was placed in this bracket, meaning that
Speaker 1: he wasn't at a dead end in terms of his salary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before this point, I mean, in addition to you know,
Speaker 1: moonlighting is a bartender that we talked about earlier, there
Speaker 1: was a time when he was also trying to moonlight
Speaker 1: as like a pharmaceutical sales trip, and with this they
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, you cannot do this pharmaceutical sales thing anymore.
Speaker 1: That's almost the whole separate thing. So Thomas and Blaylock
Speaker 1: continued to work together for decades later. Thomas developed a
Speaker 1: procedure called atrial septech. To me, this involves making a
Speaker 1: small hole in the wall between the hearts left and
Speaker 1: right atria, and that can help treat pulmonary hypertes and
Speaker 1: some congenital heart diseases, including when a person's blood vessels
Speaker 1: around their hearts are transposed. This procedure is something that
Speaker 1: Thomas had worked on discreetly. He kept it a secret
Speaker 1: and showed Blaylock his success only after he was sure
Speaker 1: that it had worked. This was the procedure that Blaylock
Speaker 1: described as looking quote like something the Lord made. That
Speaker 1: became the title of a nineteen nine article in The
Speaker 1: Washington i In that was many people's first exposure to
Speaker 1: Vivian Thomas, as well as the title of the HBO
Speaker 1: film that dramatizes this relationship. In nineteen fifty one, Thomas
Speaker 1: was credited in a published paper for the first time
Speaker 1: after a visiting fellow from Canada included him among the authors,
Speaker 1: not realizing all the social and racial implications involved. Other
Speaker 1: doctors included Thomas in the years that followed, although he
Speaker 1: was never credited on Blaylock's publications. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: Blaylock turned sixty and Thomas was not invited to the
Speaker 1: faculty party his honor. Some of the organizers sneaked him
Speaker 1: in and he watched from behind the plants, which is
Speaker 1: something that he later described as humiliating. Blaylock retired from
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins five years later, and as he was mumbling
Speaker 1: over how to spend his time after his retirement, Thomas
Speaker 1: said not to include him in those plans. For most
Speaker 1: of their thirty four years working together, Blaylock had just
Speaker 1: assumed that they were a package when entertaining other job
Speaker 1: and research offers, thinking that if he left Johns Hopkins,
Speaker 1: Thomas would obviously go to but Thomas wanted to make
Speaker 1: his own way. Blaylock died on September fifteenth, nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: just a few months after he retired. Towards the end
Speaker 1: of his life, he expressed some regret over having not
Speaker 1: ever sent Thomas to medical school. Blaylock's obituary in the
Speaker 1: New York Times described the surgery performed on Eileen Saxon. Quote.
Speaker 1: Hospital officials recalled that Dr. Blaylock made a long incision
Speaker 1: and exposed the beating heart of a fifteen month old girl.
Speaker 1: Then for three hours he worked at an operation no
Speaker 1: one had ever done before. The obituary also mentioned Tausig's involvement,
Speaker 1: but not that Thomas was standing behind Blaylock and walking
Speaker 1: him through it. Vivian Thomas continued to have a career
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins after Blaylock's retirement as lab supervisor. He
Speaker 1: had been training surgeons and technicians for years, including training
Speaker 1: twenty black surgical technicians, two of whom later went on
Speaker 1: to medical school. The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine integrated
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, and Thomas had also become a
Speaker 1: mentor for the university's first black medical students and residents.
Speaker 1: In the years that followed, attitudes about race were shifting
Speaker 1: in the United States in general and at Johns Hopkins specifically,
Speaker 1: and in the late nineteen sixties, surgeons and technicians who
Speaker 1: had trained with Vivian Thomas started to advocate for him
Speaker 1: to be recognized for his contributions. A group of former
Speaker 1: surgical Fellows, nicknamed the Old Hands Club, took the lead
Speaker 1: on commissioning and pay for a portrait of Vivian Thomas
Speaker 1: to be hung across from Blaylock's portrait in the lobby
Speaker 1: of the Blaylock Building at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The
Speaker 1: portrait was unveiled at a meeting of the Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: Medical and Surgical Society in nine after a series of speeches.
Speaker 1: Thomas spoke as well. He said that when he had
Speaker 1: learned about the plans for this portrait, quote, my emotions
Speaker 1: were quite mixed, and they still are. People in our
Speaker 1: category are not accustomed to being in the limelight. Most
Speaker 1: of you are. If our names get into print, it's
Speaker 1: usually in the very fine print, down at the bottom somewhere.
Speaker 1: But being placed in the position I find myself now
Speaker 1: makes me feel quite humbled, but at the self same
Speaker 1: time just a little proud. At no time, during all
Speaker 1: the years that I have been here at Hopkins, have
Speaker 1: I had any idea that I would ever do anything
Speaker 1: that would make a mark upon this institution, or make
Speaker 1: any contribution to the field of medicine that would merit
Speaker 1: such recognition as I am getting here today. Press coverage
Speaker 1: about the unveiling of this portrait is how many of
Speaker 1: Thomas's friends and neighbors learned for the first time just
Speaker 1: what kind of work he had been doing at Johns Hopkins.
Speaker 1: He wrote in his autobiography about getting this this call
Speaker 1: from a friend, like the morning the newspaper came out,
Speaker 1: asking all these questions, and he was like, I'm still
Speaker 1: in bed. I don't I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Further recognition of Thomas's achievements and contributions followed from there.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy six, he was named Instructor of Surgery
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, meaning that he
Speaker 1: was for the first time formally part of the faculty.
Speaker 1: He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university that
Speaker 1: same year. This followed an effort from University of Maryland
Speaker 1: College Park to do the same, which fell through after
Speaker 1: the Board of regents voted not to approve it, even
Speaker 1: though Thomas had already been informed that it was in
Speaker 1: the works. Yeah, that seemed very embarrassing for the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland College Park. Also for reasons that aren't entirely
Speaker 1: clear to me. The honorary doctor he got is a
Speaker 1: doctorate of laws and not a doctor of medicine um.
Speaker 1: And I was not able to track down why that was.
Speaker 1: That there were vague references to there being some restrictions,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what restrictions do you mean. Toward
Speaker 1: the end of his time at Johns Hopkins, Thomas worked
Speaker 1: with Dr Levi Watkins, Jr. He was the first black
Speaker 1: medical student to graduate from Vanderbilt University and the first
Speaker 1: black cardiac surgery resident at Johns Hopkins. Thomas helped Watkins
Speaker 1: develop and troubleshoot the process for implanting an automatic cardiac defibrillator,
Speaker 1: that is, a surgery that Watkins performed for the first
Speaker 1: time ever in nineteen eighty. Thomas had retired just a
Speaker 1: year before that happened, and at the request of many
Speaker 1: of his colleagues, he had started writing an autobiography. The
Speaker 1: autobiography was printed as Pioneering Research in Surgical Shock and
Speaker 1: cardio Vascular Surgery, Vivian Thomas and his work with Alfred Blaylock.
Speaker 1: Copies printed more recently are titled Partners of the Heart,
Speaker 1: which is also the title of a movie from PBS
Speaker 1: American Experience that debuted in two thousand four. The HBO
Speaker 1: movie called Something The Lord main stars most Deaf as
Speaker 1: Vivian Thomas, Allen Rickman is Alfred Blaylock, and Mary Stuart
Speaker 1: Masterson is Helen Tausig, and it also came out in
Speaker 1: two thousand four. Vivian Thomas died of pancreatic cancer on November.
Speaker 1: The work that he did with Alfred Blaylock really set
Speaker 1: the stage for the field of cardiac surgery. It was
Speaker 1: a field that really flourished from there. Blaylock and Thomas
Speaker 1: and the rest of the surgical team demonstrated that it
Speaker 1: was possible to operate on a heart and that patients
Speaker 1: who were sick enough to require cardiac surgery could survive
Speaker 1: the anesthesia and the physical trauma that were required to
Speaker 1: carry it out. When Alfred Blaylock, Helen Tausick, and Robert
Speaker 1: Gross were granted the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award
Speaker 1: in ninety four, they were described as launching quote a
Speaker 1: worldwide surge of effective investigation and corrective surgery into all
Speaker 1: phases of cardiovascular dynamics. This absolutely would not have been
Speaker 1: possible without Vivian Thomas surgical procedures that Thomas developed are
Speaker 1: still performed today, although the Blaylock Thomas Tausig shunt, as
Speaker 1: it is increasingly known, is often a temporary first step
Speaker 1: to help a patient survive until they can have other
Speaker 1: procedures to address a heart malformation more directly. Today, it
Speaker 1: typically involves a synthetic shunt rather than one of the
Speaker 1: patient's own blood vessels. So one point of conjecture that
Speaker 1: often comes up as what Thomas might have achieved if
Speaker 1: he had been able to attend medical school, the idea
Speaker 1: being that if he was so brilliant with a high
Speaker 1: school education, that he might have been truly astounding if
Speaker 1: he had been able to earn an m d. But
Speaker 1: really that's a little complicated. Thomas's connection to Blaylock gave
Speaker 1: him access to white medical institutions which he would not
Speaker 1: have had if he had gone to medical school and
Speaker 1: started a career of his own. And the words of
Speaker 1: Dr Roweena Spencer, who worked with Thomas on the development
Speaker 1: of the atrial septectomy and was the only woman ever
Speaker 1: to serve as a surgical intern for Alfred Blaylock quote,
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is that is a black
Speaker 1: physician in that era, he would probably have had to
Speaker 1: spend all his time and energy making a living among
Speaker 1: an economically deprived black population. And we'll end with a
Speaker 1: brief and frequently repeated an illustrative story from the late
Speaker 1: Dr j Alex Haller. Early in his career, Hallard was
Speaker 1: working at the National Institutes of Health with Alfred Casper
Speaker 1: as a technician. One day, while working in the lab,
Speaker 1: Howard ran into trouble with bleeding during a procedure, but
Speaker 1: solved the problem. Casper complimented Hallar on how he had
Speaker 1: handled himself, and Hallard said, well, I trained with Dr Blaylock. Later,
Speaker 1: during another procedure that went even further awry, Hallard found
Speaker 1: himself totally at a loss for what to do, and
Speaker 1: Casper stepped in and fixed the situation. When Haller thanked
Speaker 1: and complimented Casper, he said, I trained with Vivian Tracy.
Speaker 1: Do you have a little listener mail to wrap this
Speaker 1: one up? I do. It's also related to medicine and
Speaker 1: previous episodes that we have done on the theme of
Speaker 1: saving lots of babies. Uh, and it is from Shauna.
Speaker 1: Shawna says, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to
Speaker 1: the podcast for years, and I've always wanted to be
Speaker 1: a part of your listener emails, but had never had
Speaker 1: anything interesting to impart. And then when I felt like
Speaker 1: I did, I never actually got around to writing that email.
Speaker 1: I even put it on my to do list, maybe
Speaker 1: even last year, where it's been lingering until now. This
Speaker 1: year has been a year of fate, especially surrounding my
Speaker 1: wedding last weekend that we booked in August as a
Speaker 1: purposeful COVID wedding. It was a pop up wedding, which
Speaker 1: was perfect for me as a bride who wanted nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the planning part of a wedding, and
Speaker 1: it was amazing anyway, not the purpose of this email.
Speaker 1: It was your podcast recently where Tracy mentioned procrastination, to
Speaker 1: which I reminded myself about emailing. And then at the
Speaker 1: end of the bram Stoker episode you talked about the
Speaker 1: episode Deja Vu, which is what I originally was going
Speaker 1: to email you about. See fate. So now I feel
Speaker 1: compelled to actually push aside the procrastination and get down
Speaker 1: to business. This goes back to the episode about Dr
Speaker 1: Cooney and the premature babies. I started listening to saw
Speaker 1: Bones as a recommendation from you guys, and they did
Speaker 1: an episode about Dr Cooney and I was like, yes, Stephew,
Speaker 1: miss in History did this topic already. The Inventor Doctor,
Speaker 1: the Premature Babies, Invented Incubator showed it as some kind
Speaker 1: of world fair, brought it to America. It was like
Speaker 1: a beach side attraction or something. I totally remember this.
Speaker 1: And then shortly thereafter, you guys released an episode on
Speaker 1: Dr Cooney and mentioned that it was on saw Bones,
Speaker 1: and I said, are utterly confused, because in my mind
Speaker 1: you had already done that topic. That's how I knew
Speaker 1: about it. I tried searching the archives and found nothing.
Speaker 1: So Ever since I've had this itching thought of how
Speaker 1: did I know all about Dr Cooney before both podcasted
Speaker 1: episodes on it. Maybe I'll never knew, but it's the
Speaker 1: weirdest thing, and I understand episode deja vu. Um. So
Speaker 1: Seana went on to write a little bit about the
Speaker 1: home economics episode that we did previously, and of course
Speaker 1: that was offered in Ontario called Managing Personal and Family Resources,
Speaker 1: which included all kinds of basic life stuff including what
Speaker 1: the symbols on your clothes mean for washing? Um, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to read the whole rest of the email
Speaker 1: because it is relatively long, but I just want to
Speaker 1: say I hate those washing symbols. I know the point
Speaker 1: was to try to standardize laundering instruction on labels, but
Speaker 1: I don't know what any of the main And every
Speaker 1: time I'm looking at a new piece, like a new
Speaker 1: garment that I'm washing for the first time, if it
Speaker 1: only has those symbols and it doesn't have words, I'm
Speaker 1: like having to google laundry symbols to be able to
Speaker 1: do my laundry. So anyway, Shanna, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for this email. I became very curious to be like,
Speaker 1: how did Shanna learn about the babyside shows that that
Speaker 1: that you know seemed to already be Shawna's mind before
Speaker 1: having um got into our episode. Um, there was a
Speaker 1: couple of years before uh we or saw Oons did
Speaker 1: the episode. Um, there was an episode of story Corps
Speaker 1: which would have been played during Morning Edition on NPR
Speaker 1: if you are a Morning Edition listener or just a
Speaker 1: story Corps listener. UM, and that predated our episode and
Speaker 1: the saw Bones episode in the ninety invisible episode, all
Speaker 1: of which you know we're reasonably near one another. I
Speaker 1: think yeah, or maybe the sab Bonnes was was first,
Speaker 1: the sub Owns was first, and then it was like
Speaker 1: us at nine of visible near each other. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: a great mystery to solve. I'm all the time, I'm like,
Speaker 1: didn't I hear that before? What's the happening? We're out
Speaker 1: of Halloween season, so I can't go past life experience,
Speaker 1: but go um so Sean also sent lots of UH
Speaker 1: future episode suggestions as well, So anyway, thank you SHAWNA
Speaker 1: for this email. Thanks to everybody who's been writing to
Speaker 1: us lately. UH. If you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcast, History podcast at
Speaker 1: I heart radio dot com, we're all over social media
Speaker 1: as a miss in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Speaker 1: and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: the I heart radio app and Apple podcast at anywhere
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Speaker 1: Class is a pro ouption of I heart Radio. For
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Speaker 1: favorite shows. H