Medicine
James Derham was born into slavery in Philadelphia in 1762. As a child, Derham was transferred to Dr. John Kearsley Jr., under whom Derham studied medicine. From Kearsley, Derham learned about compound medicine focusing on curing throat illnesses, as well as patient bedside manner. Upon Dr. Kearsley’s death, Derham, then fifteen years old, was moved between several different enslavers before finally settling with Dr. George West, a surgeon for a British regiment during the American Revolutionary War. He was eventually transferred again, this time to New Orleans doctor Robert Dove.
As an assistant at Dove’s practice, Derham and Dove became friends, and Dove finally granted Derham his freedom. With some financial assistance from Dove, Derham opened a medical practice in New Orleans. By 1789, his practice is reported to have made about $3,000 (~$76,723 in 2023) annually. In 1788, Derham and Dr. Benjamin Rush met each other in Philadelphia, and corresponded with one another for twelve years. Derham’s final letter to Rush in 1802 is the last record of his existence. It is believed that after the Spanish authorities restricted Derham to treating throat diseases in 1801, Derham left his practice in New Orleans.
Medicine
1892-1971. Dr. Theodore K. Lawless was a skin specialist (dermatologist) who became a millionaire form his studies, practice adn development of medicines. He also contributed to the better understanding of syphilis, a venereal disease; and leprosy, a disease which wastes away the muscles of the body. Setting up his ofices in the heart of Chicago’s Black community, he established one of the largest and best known skin clinics in the city. For many years, men and women and children, both balack and white, crowded his waiting room from morning until night. But he still found time to teach at Northwestern University, work with the staff of Chicago’s Provident Hospital, and share his knowledge with other doctors. In 1954, he was awarded th NAACP’s Spingarn Medal.
Medicine
Susie King Taylor served African American troops during the Civil War for more than 4 years and did so without pay. Taylor’s male relatives joined the 33rd U.S. Colored Infantry and she stayed with their unit, traveling up and down the Georgia coast as a laundress, cook, and nurse. Taylor also taught classes for the men. She had learned to read and write in a secret slave school during childhood. Later in the war, Taylor tended the men of the famous black regiment, the Massachusetts 54th and worked with Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross. After the war, Taylor opened a school for the newly freed black children of Savannah, Georgia and wrote the story of her life, My Life in Camp, the only such account of the Civil War by a black woman.
Medicine
In the spring of 1721, a smallpox epidemic erupted in Boston, killing nearly 1,000 people. Born in Africa, Onesimus, a house slave owned by one of the leading ministers of colonial New England, told about “buying the smallpox,” the inoculation he remembered from African in which people infected themselves with the smallpox disease to create immunity. Mather had read of inoculation in British scientific journals and knew the public opposed it as natural and dangerous. Relying on Onesimus’ knowledge, Mather persuaded Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to experiment with inoculation, which he did on his own son. The experiment was a success, and Dr. Boylston began inoculating a convinced public. Onesimus’ knowledge of smallpox inoculation saved countless lives.
Medicine
1846 – 1922
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cole was the second black woman to graduate from medical school (1867). She joined Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first white woman physician, in New York and taught hygiene and childcare to families in poor neighborhoods.
Medicine
(b. Jan. 18, 1858, Hollidaysburg, Pa.–d. Aug. 4, 1931, Idlewild, Mich.), American physician and founder of Provident Hospital in Chicago, credited with the first successful heart surgery.
Williams graduated from Chicago Medical College in 1883. He served as surgeon for the South Side Dispensary (1884-92) and physician for the Protestant Orphan Asylum (1884-93). In response to the lack of opportunity for blacks in the medical professions, he founded (1891) the nation’s first interracial hospital, Provident, to provide training for black interns and the first school for black nurses in the United States. He was a surgeon at Provident (1892-93, 1898-1912) and surgeon in chief of Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (1894-98), where he established another school for black nurses.
It was at Provident Hospital that Williams performed daring heart surgery on July 10, 1893. Although contemporary medical opinion disapproved of surgical treatment of heart wounds, Williams opened the patient’s thoracic cavity without aid of blood transfusions or modern anesthetics and antibiotics. During the surgery he examined the heart, sutured a wound of the pericardium (the sac surrounding the heart), and closed the chest. The patient lived at least 20 years following the surgery. Williams’ procedure is cited as the first recorded repair of the pericardium; some sources, however, cite a similar operation performed by H.C. Dalton of St. Louis in 1891.
Williams later served on the staffs of Cook County Hospital (1903-09) and St. Luke’s Hospital (1912-31), both in Chicago. From 1899 he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., and was a member of the Illinois State Board of Health (1889-91). He published several articles on surgery in medical journals. Williams became the only black charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.
