January 18

Commemorating Daniel Hale Williams

On this day in 1856, Daniel Hale Williams, a pioneer in heart surgery, was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. In 1893 Williams performed the first open-heart surgery. He operated on a person who had been stabbed in the heart. The patient recovered and lived for several more years.

Williams also established a training school for nurses and founded the Provident Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago, the oldest freestanding African American-owned hospital in the United States. Williams was the only African American physician in the 100-member American College of Surgeons in 1913.