Daniel Hale Williams was born on Jan. 18, 1856, in Hollidaysburg, Pa. He attended school there and in Annapolis and Baltimore, Md. He eventually settled in Janesville, Wis., where he worked his way through the Janesville Classical Academy as a barber and bass violin player. After a medical preceptorship in Janesville, he received his medical degree from Chicago Medical College (affiliated with Northwestern University) in 1883. Following internship at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, he was appointed surgeon to the South Side Dispensary and demonstrator of anatomy at Northwestern. He continued to improve his surgery through anatomical dissection.
In 1891 Dr. Williams founded Provident Hospital in Chicago, where black patients were freely admitted and African American nurses trained. This was the first black voluntary hospital in America. It had an interracial staff and board of trustees. Newspaper reports of an operation he performed in 1893 gave him instant fame, as he was acclaimed the first physician to operate on the human heart. He did not publish his case until 1897, and there may, in fact, have been an earlier pericardial suture; the point remains unclear.
In 1894 Dr. Williams was appointed surgeon in chief of Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., then the most prestigious medical post open to an African American, but hardly an inviting one. He remained here until 1898, when he resigned after controversies. He wrought many improvements in Freedmen's. He reduced its mortality rate, established its School of Nursing, appointed the first interns, acquired the first ambulance, and imposed discipline geared to the highest standards of excellence. [Click Here To Read More]
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