Medicine
Vivien T. Thomas was a key player in pioneering the anastomosis of the subclavian artery to the pulmonary artery.The surgical work he performed with Alfred Blalock paved the way for the successful outcome of the Blalock-Taussig shunt.
In January 1930, Vivien Thomas, a young African-American who was forced for lack of funds to leave his first year of college, came to work for Blalock in his laboratory. At that point Blalock’s increasing obligations were cutting into the time he could spend in the laboratory and he needed a surgical assistant. A more fortunate choice could not have been made. Vivien Thomas learned to perform the surgical operations and chemical determinations needed for their experiments, to calculate the results, and to keep precise records; he remained an invaluable associate throughout Blalock’s career.
Medicine
Born in Kentucky, Maurice Rabb earned a B.S. in 1954, and an M.D. in 1958 from the University of Louisville. In an impressive medical career, Rabb has served as director of the Illinois Eye Bank and Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois Medical School and as director of the Fluorescein Angiography Laboratory at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. In addition he has worked as co-director of the Sickle Cell Center at the University of Illinois Medical Center, and did a stint as chief of ophthalmology at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. Rabb has also received awards in 1962 and 1964 for photographic work concentrating on the physiology of the inner eye.
Medicine
Augustus Nathaniel Lushington was born in August 1, 1869. He became the first African American to earn a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.), earning the doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1897. He practiced two years in Philadelpha, PA then served as an instructor in Veterinary Sanitation and Hygiene at Bell Mead Industrial and Agricultural College at Rock Castle, Virginia. Later, he resigned and returned to a practice located in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was known for the proficient, high-class scientific service maintained in his practice in the Lynchburg area.
