One of the pioneers of heart surgery was a man who wasn't a doctor. He was paid a janitor's fee for a significant part of his working life. He was black. Yet, without Vivian Thomas, cardiac surgery could not have made the progress it did over the years. Dr Denton Cooley is a legend among cardiac surgeons for implanting the first artificial heart. On 29 November, 1944, Cooley was assisting Dr Alfred Blalock, who was performing the modern world's first successful heart surgery, at John Hopkins Hospital.
Behind Blalock stood Thomas, his assistant and long-term associate, every step of the surgery. "No, Vivian Thomas wasn't a doctor. He wasn't even a college graduate. He was just so smart, and so skilled, and so much his own man, that it didn't matter. And, could he operate. Even if you'd never seen surgery before Vivian made it look so simple," Cooley would go on to say. Katie McCabe profile Thomas and his decades-long relationship with Blalock, and his struggles against racial prejudice. "What mattered was that Alfred Blalock and Vivian Thomas could do historic things together that neither could do alone," she writes. Today, portraits of Blalock and Thomas hang, side by side, on the walls of the hospital that they made - and made famous.
Behind Blalock stood Thomas, his assistant and long-term associate, every step of the surgery. "No, Vivian Thomas wasn't a doctor. He wasn't even a college graduate. He was just so smart, and so skilled, and so much his own man, that it didn't matter. And, could he operate. Even if you'd never seen surgery before Vivian made it look so simple," Cooley would go on to say. Katie McCabe profile Thomas and his decades-long relationship with Blalock, and his struggles against racial prejudice. "What mattered was that Alfred Blalock and Vivian Thomas could do historic things together that neither could do alone," she writes. Today, portraits of Blalock and Thomas hang, side by side, on the walls of the hospital that they made - and made famous.
