Vivien Thomas was born in 1910 in Louisiana. He dreamed of being a medical doctor and enrolled as a premed student at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College. Shortly after, the Great Depression forced him to postpone his studies and instead he became the laboratory assistant to Dr. Alfred Blalock, who was investigating shock, a fatal and misunderstood component of trauma. Thomas’s wits and skills were apparent as he quickly became adept at operating on dogs, developing experiments and designing specialized surgical tools around Blalock’s hypotheses and musings (on shock and beyond).
Vivien Thomas was credited as a janitor early in his career, but his duties were far from it.
The men developed a routine and mutual respect, with Blalock covering clinical and administrative duties and Thomas managing the lab. Thomas was recognized as indispensable by Blalock, who argued for salary raises and made them a package deal when he was offered more prestigious positions. The two were equals within the lab even if society was still segregated.
Their work dynamics and value as a team became more apparent when Blalock moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital as surgeon-in-chief. There, cardiologist Dr. Helen Taussig sought out their expertise in vascular surgery. She wanted to find a solution for blue baby syndrome, a condition that causes blue skin in newborns due to low levels of oxygen. One of the underlying causes is a congenital heart defect that reduces blood flow to the lungs. Taussig reasoned that they could connect the aorta to the pulmonary artery to increase blood flow.
Vivien Thomas already had a solution.
Thomas had performed such a surgery on dogs years ago when they were exploring surgical solutions for hypertension. The surgery, a failure at the time, could serve a new purpose now. Thomas reproduced four congenital heart defects, known together as the tetralogy of Fallot, and performed the surgery before Blalock’s first human patient, Eileen Saxon. By then, Thomas had done the surgery on canines over a hundred times and Blalock had done it once under his supervision.
While Thomas had caused a stir over the years, being the first black man in a lab coat at Hopkins, he did not try to push the status quo and did not plan on being in the operating room if it were not for Blalock’s insistence. Vivien Thomas stood over Blalock’s shoulder the entire duration of the operation, walking him through the delicate procedure. Shortly after the clamps were removed and blood flow was restored, Eileen turned a more natural pink. Though she returned a few weeks later and required another surgery, the brief period of recovery in between suggested that the surgery could work even if it was not a cure-all. Their next patient was a definitive success and the operating room became a beacon of hope for blue babies across the nation.
It was the beginning of a new era.
Hopkins wasn’t equipped to meet the need in many respects. There was no cardiology department and the tools for such surgery were modified from existing materials by Thomas. Most importantly, they only had one cardiac surgeon, Vivien Thomas. He went on to train numerous doctors and Black technicians even after Blalock’s retirement. After over 30 years of research, Thomas received an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and officially joined faculty members as an Instructor of Surgery. Today his legacy is honored through numerous awards and scholarships made in his name to recognize innovative research and support black and minority students in their pursuit of higher education.
Today, Vivien’s story is known by many and shared through numerous works in the media. One of the most notable works covering Thomas is the article, “Like Something the Lord Made,” by Katie McCab, published in The Washingtonian. The article inspired the creation of an Emmy-award winning HBO movie of the same name. To learn more about Vivien Thomas, check out the following sources:
References:
The Blue Baby Operation (Exhibit). Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Mayland.
McCab, Katie. “The Remarkable Story of Vivien Thomas, the Black Man Who Helped Invent Heart Surgery” Washintonian, June 19, 2020.
“Just One More | Vivien Thomas: Remembering a Pioneering Legend”. Cardiology Magazine, February 04, 2021.