The Unsung Hero of Heart Surgery

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2017

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The African-American lab technician, Vivien Thomas, whose surgery helped save the lives of millions of babies but whose work went unrecognised for years. Claire Bowes has been listening to archive recordings of Vivien Thomas describing his long partnership with Dr Alfred Blalock, the man solely credited with inventing an operation in 1944 which helped manage a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot.

(Photo: Vivien Thomas, US Surgical Technician, 1940) (Audio: Courtesy of US National Library of Medicine)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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1:04.7	sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading witness the history podcast from the
1:09.7	BBC World Service. I'm Claire Bose and today we're returning to the winter of
1:15.1	1944 and a key moment in medical history. The first successful operation on the
1:22.1	beating heart of a baby. successful operation.
1:25.0	the African-American, I've been hearing about the unsung hero of the operation,
1:28.0	the African American surgical assistant.
1:32.0	This is a tale of two men completely opposite in almost every way
	...

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