Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy P. Wilson
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly fry Uh. This week it was not
Speaker 1: exactly a two parter, but we talked about Helen Tausig
Speaker 1: and Vivian Thomas, who were both part of the development
Speaker 1: of heart surgery to treat to trilogy of Fellow and
Speaker 1: Other congenital heart Conditions Vivian time, They've both been on
Speaker 1: my list forever. Really, for so so long. I feel
Speaker 1: like the first people who suggested it to us as
Speaker 1: a topic. We're like, way way back when you and
Speaker 1: I very first joined the show, UM on a visit
Speaker 1: to see my mom my mom and I watched something
Speaker 1: the Lord made, and I think that was really what
Speaker 1: made me go, who's this Mary Stewart Masterson character? Though,
Speaker 1: like like, I had been percolating on this idea of
Speaker 1: Vivian Thomas for so long, and then I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, but who is this this other doctor?
Speaker 1: Like I became very curious about her, and for a
Speaker 1: time I thought I was going to do you a trilogy,
Speaker 1: But honestly, I found Dr Blaylock a little frustrating. Um
Speaker 1: shout out to that movie though, because it is so good.
Speaker 1: It's a really good movie. Like I remember being so
Speaker 1: blown away by most deaf in that movie, and I
Speaker 1: can't remember if that was before after Hitchhiker's Guide, but
Speaker 1: I just remember being like, this person that I didn't
Speaker 1: realize was a good actor is holding his own in
Speaker 1: scenes with Alan Rickman, and they are both equally compelling,
Speaker 1: and that is hard to do with Allen Rickman. Um
Speaker 1: I say, as a big Ellen Rinkman him, but I
Speaker 1: just remember being like, Holy Moses, he's really good. It's
Speaker 1: a fun watch. Yeah, it's a really good movie. I
Speaker 1: have not seen the UM the documentary that was on
Speaker 1: PBS American Experience. I had, I had thought about. It
Speaker 1: is available, I think in one place to rent a
Speaker 1: streaming version of it, and I just did not. I
Speaker 1: did not find the time to do it. UM. I
Speaker 1: do have a story about Helen Tausig that I did
Speaker 1: not include in the episode because I just couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out whether this was something that Tausity actually expressed or
Speaker 1: if it was the interpretation of the author who was
Speaker 1: doing the writing UM so very late in her life
Speaker 1: after she had retired. UM Tausig had this surgery first
Speaker 1: on one ear and then on the other that restored
Speaker 1: a lot of her hearing um. And the way this
Speaker 1: was described and what I was reading was that people
Speaker 1: had really tried to pressure her to do it during
Speaker 1: her career, and she didn't want to do it because
Speaker 1: it was an elective surgery. That part is in the episode,
Speaker 1: but it was also that she was like, I'm doing
Speaker 1: my job. Fine. If you think I'm talking too loudly
Speaker 1: or too quietly, that is your problem, not my problem.
Speaker 1: And so I don't think I need to have an
Speaker 1: elective surgery to address your discomfort with my speaking volume.
Speaker 1: And I was like, man, I really really wish I knew,
Speaker 1: because it was not clear in the way that it
Speaker 1: was written whether that was something that like had that
Speaker 1: that was her own thought that she had expressed somewhere,
Speaker 1: or whether that was the thought of the person who
Speaker 1: was writing the paper. Um, But I did want to
Speaker 1: kind of acknowledge it because I was like, that's awesome, right.
Speaker 1: I loved her the story that you included about the
Speaker 1: medical school discussion, and like, why would anybody do all
Speaker 1: this if they're not actually going to get a degree
Speaker 1: at the end it's like, I hope they don't. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you, goodbye bye. I think it was really weird.
Speaker 1: I kept finding places that said that Boston University was
Speaker 1: not granting uh medical degrees to women, and I was
Speaker 1: like it, but be you was like co educational, going
Speaker 1: back to when it absorbed the like New England Women's
Speaker 1: Medical School. So I was really confusing. I went down
Speaker 1: a big rabbit hole to try to figure out like
Speaker 1: what was behind that, And I really think it was
Speaker 1: just that her professor thought that Johns Hopkins might be
Speaker 1: a better school. But yeah, she wound up than at
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins for the for the rest of her career. Um,
Speaker 1: we've had uh, like a lot of people wanting to
Speaker 1: work in fields that did not really welcome them. Um.
Speaker 1: Over the last couple of weeks, it became kind of
Speaker 1: an accidental thematic. Yeah, well it's, uh, we're coming out
Speaker 1: of Halloween season, so that's like a scary um but
Speaker 1: also of you know, frequent story of the people that
Speaker 1: aren't really talked about yeah history as much. So it's
Speaker 1: not so surprising that it emerges right thematic from time
Speaker 1: to time. But we have been on a tear yeah,
Speaker 1: and another story that did not make it to end
Speaker 1: of the episode was actually about Dr Blaylock. Apparently Dr
Speaker 1: Blaylock loved Coca Cola and he would drink like six
Speaker 1: cokes a day, um, and if he shared a coke
Speaker 1: with you, like that was a mark of honor. He
Speaker 1: did not understand that he did not just offer people
Speaker 1: a coke when they came into the lab um and
Speaker 1: when they were doing experiments involving shock, one of the
Speaker 1: things that they were trying to study was was cold,
Speaker 1: and they had this refrigerator and he was like, that
Speaker 1: was where the cokes were stored. And they were having
Speaker 1: to clear everything out of it to make it like
Speaker 1: an experimental space with cold temperatures. And Dr Blaylock kept
Speaker 1: being like, but but my cokes, though, like where are
Speaker 1: my cokes gonna go? And they thought sort of thought
Speaker 1: he was joking. You were like, we're using this for
Speaker 1: experiments now. And finally he like found a box like
Speaker 1: a VIVI and Thomas found this box that five cokes
Speaker 1: would fit in, and then like Dr Blaylock found the
Speaker 1: one place that it would fit into this refrigerator and
Speaker 1: I was like, man, I feel like this is just
Speaker 1: a an illustrative story about this very particular man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I share your frustration. He seems like just an insufferable person.
Speaker 1: And I keep finding myself going like why did no one?
Speaker 1: I mean, but people did realize. You mentioned it in
Speaker 1: your outline that like it was getting to the point
Speaker 1: where his career was on kind of thin ice. Yeah, oh, ma'am.
Speaker 1: There's part of me that I started laughing at one
Speaker 1: point and I asked Casey to remove it because my
Speaker 1: thought for the time machine that we often talk about
Speaker 1: is just to send my hand flipping the bird back
Speaker 1: in time to him, Like, yeah, I feel like, don't
Speaker 1: be such a jerk. One of the things that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have pointed out is that Dr Blaylock
Speaker 1: could not have done what he did without Vivian Thomas.
Speaker 1: It just he needed he needed Vivian Thomas to to
Speaker 1: do what he did. But conversely, like Vivian Thomas could
Speaker 1: not have done what he did without Alfred Blaylock, Like
Speaker 1: there was just there was no possible way that um
Speaker 1: like the white medical establishment, even if he had gone
Speaker 1: to medical school and he had developed his practice on
Speaker 1: his own and he had found the time and the
Speaker 1: resources to be able to do research of his own,
Speaker 1: and he had made some kind of breakthrough, Like it's
Speaker 1: just not likely that the like the white medical establishment
Speaker 1: would have taken notice of it, Like and that's that's
Speaker 1: just not something that that probably would have happened. A
Speaker 1: lot of people have also commented that like Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: was there was a lot of racism at Johns Hopkins.
Speaker 1: We talked towards the end of the episode about about
Speaker 1: Thomas working with Dr Levi Watkins Jr. On the first
Speaker 1: implanted autumn at it cardiac defibrillator. He also became part
Speaker 1: of the admissions committee, and after he became involved with
Speaker 1: admissions into Johns Hopkins Medical School, UM admissions of marginalized
Speaker 1: groups grew by something like four hundred percent, which is
Speaker 1: a lot a lot. I mean, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know how in terms of actual numbers that pans out,
Speaker 1: but like there was like still a lot of work
Speaker 1: that was needing to be done in the last years
Speaker 1: that UM that Vivian Thomas was working there, even as
Speaker 1: he was becoming more recognized for what he had done
Speaker 1: Complex symbiosis. Yeah, yeah, of that whole thing is it
Speaker 1: is hard. I think that's probably why people don't as
Speaker 1: often kind of acknowledge why like Thomas needed Blaylock as
Speaker 1: well as because he was such a jerk. U but
Speaker 1: like as you you know, so clearly pointed out, like
Speaker 1: they're just we're wheels in motion, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them racism related that would have held him back otherwise. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: I am glad that Vivian Thomas got some recognition while
Speaker 1: he was still alive too to learn about it, because
Speaker 1: like that's also happened where we've done episodes about people
Speaker 1: who did something that was a big breakthrough that was
Speaker 1: totally just washed over the in their time, and then
Speaker 1: it's not until long after their death that somebody gets
Speaker 1: told that was actually deeply important. You're a genius. Yeah yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I don't remember. It was on the Johns Hopkins website,
Speaker 1: but the speeches from when that portrait was dedicated, Like
Speaker 1: the speech is online, Like there's a SoundCloud file of
Speaker 1: it up there, so you can listen to Vivian Thomas
Speaker 1: actually talking, which I found to be lovely. It is,
Speaker 1: it's so it struck me so hard the excerpt that
Speaker 1: you included where he's talking about how he didn't think
Speaker 1: he ever, you know, would be seen as making such
Speaker 1: a big impact, and when you considered like how much
Speaker 1: work he was doing, the fact that that was not
Speaker 1: ever part of his mental equation like oh, I'm doing
Speaker 1: important things that people will see as is a little
Speaker 1: bit heartbreaking and also speaks to his own humility and yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, it's a very moving speech. Yeah. He seems
Speaker 1: to have been just deeply, deeply humble about everything his
Speaker 1: whole life. So I hope people enjoyed the episodes. We
Speaker 1: really did get a request for Vivian Thomas within like
Speaker 1: the last week. Like when I was going through looking
Speaker 1: for listener mail to read for the these episodes, I
Speaker 1: found that one. So it was a very recently uh
Speaker 1: sent in one. And anyway, uh, if you'd like to
Speaker 1: send us an email, We're at History Podcast at i
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Speaker 1: we hope everybody has a great weekend. Whatever is on
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