The Bad Old Days of Cardiac Surgery
Written By: Shrabonti Turna
What we know today as cardiovascular surgery, or surgery of the heart, is only half a century old. This means that, up until the 1950’s, if people were to be shot in the heart, they would not be operated on.
In early years, dating back to the last Ice Age, the heart has played a very important role in literature, philosophy, art, and theology. For the Egyptians until 1,000 BCE, the heart was perceived as the center of life and morality. For ancient Greeks until 200 BCE, the heart was the center of the soul and source of heat within a body. And for what happened from then to 1952 is represented by the quote of a famous Roman author, Ovid- “Although Aesculapius [Greek deity of medicine and healing] himself applies the herbs, by no means can he cure a wound of the heart.” For many other cultures, although they may have related the heart to some medical concepts, they saw it as more the center of the spiritual self.
Surgeons who, before 1890’s, tried to operate on hearts were ridiculed as their patients would die soon after. Better summarized by leading German surgeon Theodor Billroth in 1883, “A surgeon who tries to suture a heart wound deserves to lose the esteem of his colleagues’’(Heart in History). It all changed however as Daniel Hale Williams came onto the medical field. The son of a barber had much to prove not only by founding the first black-owned hospital in America but also earning the world’s first successful heart surgery in 1893. Like never before, at the sight of a gunshot wound (GSW) in the heart, Williams dared to actually repair the damage. While successful surgeries before had been accidental miracles, the work of Williams was calculated and reliable (PBS).
This was the beginning of the cardiac surgery we take for granted today. Even though the majority of the medical field were still suspicious of the successful surgeries, it influenced enough doctors to start paving the road for future medical innovators. William’s methods were referenced by Alexis Carrel as his ideas about shunt procedures came to light in 1910. Those concepts were then referenced by Dr. Robert Gross as he repaired a defect in a patient’s pulmonary artery, hitting the worldwide news and beginning the era of modern cardiac surgery in the 1950’s. From then, little by little, came pacemakers and better detection of diseases and operations before the patient had already died. We have come a long way in a century but we have many more roads to pave. This is still the beginning.
Sources
Heart in History. PBS. Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/partners-heart-history/
Daniel Hale Williams and the First Successful Heart Surgery. PBS. Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://columbiasurgery.org/news/daniel-hale-williams-and-first-successful-heart-surgery
