They Did That

Broken Heart Surgery

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Episode notes

Before open heart surgeries became an everyday thing, the heart was totally and completely off-limits. Operating on a beating heart was just about the most taboo thing you could do. But in 1893, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, a surgeon in Chicago, got a patient with a stab wound to the heart. And it was clear that without surgery, he was going to die. Dr. Williams had never heard of anyone doing heart surgery, but he decided he would be the first to try. And he was going to do it in his own hospital. The first black owned and operated hospital in the United States. We talked with Dr. Alisha Jefferson and Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, author of Heart: A History. Dr. Jauhar has a new book, “My Father’s Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s,” which you can pre-order on Amazon.

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