Michael Debakey was a famous American cardiovascular surgeon, medical educator, and scientist. He was born on September 7, 1908 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and died on July 11, 2008, in Houston, Texas. Debakey attended Tulane University in New Orleans where he received his Bachelor of Science degree, and in 1932 he received an M.D. degree from the Tulane University school of Medicine. After completing his surgical fellowships at the University of Strasbourg and at the University of Heidelberg, Debakey returned back to Tulane where he served on the surgical faculty from 1937 to 1948. From 1942 to 1946, he served in World War II where he helped to revolutionize wartime medicine by supporting the doctors closer to the front lines. This improved the survival rate of countless wounded U.S soldiers and resulted in the great development of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital units in the Korean War.…
Hoover was born in Washington D.C. on January 1, 1895. His parents names were Anna Marie Scheitlin and Dickerson Naylor Hoover Sr. His sister's names were Sadie Marguerite Hoover and Lillian Hoover. He also had a brother named Dickerson Naylor Hoover Jr. He obtained a Bachelors of Law from The George Washington University Law School in 1916. Immediately after getting his LL.M degree, Hoover was hired by the Justice Department to work in the War Emergency Division. He accepted the job on July 27, 1917. The job only paid $990 a year, which is only equivalent to $18,000 in today's money. This job kept him out of the draft. He then became the head of the Divisions Alien Enemy Bureau. His job was to arrest and jail disloyal foreigners without trial.…
Charles Spurgen Johnson was the son of Charles Henry Johnson a Baptiste minister. They were pretty much lucky to be a little more upper class .Charles Spurgen witnessed a lynching at twelve years of age from intoxicated white men. He watched how his father stood alone brave and didn’t feel threatened he was a role model for his son as well as many other African American. This line stood out to me from the reading “Muse” “Johnson thus grew up with both a deep hatred of racial injustice and an understanding of the limits of individuals bravery in confronting it”. This part stood out to me because most African Americans weren’t brave enough to stand up for there right the they feel they were beneath these people. As far as his son…
James Derham was the first African-American to practice medicine in the United States. Born in Philadelphia, Derham started life as a slave. He was owned by three doctors in the area. In one of the households he learned to read and write. In 1788 he was sold to a prominent surgeon in New Orleans, and the surgeon encouraged Derham to learn medicine. Derham showed great aptitude at helping others, and he also quickly learned the art of surgery. He was popular for his medical knowledge but also his fluency in speaking French, English, and Spanish. He would have been a godsend to African-Americans who would not have been allowed to visit a white doctor.Slaves and African-American freemen were not permitted to consult a white doctor. For those people, Derham would have made a big difference. He is quoted as saying about Derham: “I conversed with him on medicine and surgery and found him learned. I thought I could give him information concerning the treatment of disease, but I learned more from him than he could expect from me.”…
He improved techniques for storing blood. Before Charles presented his research, blood could not be stored for more than two days because the red blood cells would break down too fast. Charles discovered that by separating the plasma from the whole blood that it could be refrigerated separately and then mixed back together as needed for up to a week later for a blood transfusion. He also discovered the fact that even though everyone has a different blood type everyone has the same type of plasma. This meant that in some cases when a person would not need a whole blood transfusion, they could get a plasma transfusion no matter their blood type. Charles Drew’s knowledge of blood inspired him to ask Columbia University to set up a blood bank and was soon asked to go to England to set up and run the country’s first blood bank in England. When he traveled to Europe, World War II was just beginning. Charles developed and ran large scale blood banks in early World War II which helped save thousands of lives. He was named project director for the American Red Cross and was the first person to speak up against segregation when it came to donating blood because there was no scientific evidence to back why it should be segregated. He later resigned from his position at the Red Cross because the U.S. War Department issued a directive that blood taken from White donors should be segregated from Black donors. In 1942, he returned to Howard University to head its Department of Surgery and work as the chief of surgery at Freedmen’s hospital. In 1948 he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people for his work on blood plasma. In 1943, he became the first black surgeon to serve as an examiner on the American Board of…
H. H. Holmes was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire to a privileged, methodist family, his original name being Herman Webster Mudgett. Herman was deemed an intellectual at an early age, expressing interest in medicine. After he graduated highschool at age 16, he went straight to medical school, where he began to steal deceased bodies and used the bodies to make false insurance claims and even experimenting on them. Later when he graduated he moved to Chicago under the false alias Henry H.…
Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3, 1904 in Washington D. C. He was born to a middle- class family. His father, Richard Drew was a carpet layer, and his mother Nora Burrell was a grade school teacher. Drew’s family lived in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood in D. C., after relocating from Pompano Beach, Florida, where he attended elementary and junior high. As a child Drew was showed to be quite athletic. He won a variety of medals for swimming, and later even more in other sports such as: football, basketball, and other sports. After graduating from his local high school, Dunbar High, he was awarded the James E. Walker Memorial.…
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a nonfiction novel that follows a young African American womaen, and her battle with Cervical Cancer during the 1950’s. During the 1950’s there had been little done to research cCervical cCancer, and the known effects were often missguided. At this time Cervical Cancer was thought to be somewhat easily treated, but as the reader finds out later that is not the case. Through the entirety of the novel, there is always a particularly negative attitude about medical health professionals. From the overall mistrust of corrupted doctors to the equally unethical scientists, this novel covers a lot of controversial topics such as the use of human cells to gain monetary value without the patient's explicit request.…
The program was not just intended to benefit and provide vital short-term aid to England, Blood for Britain was also intended to gather the research and administrative data and experience needed to launch a nationwide blood banking program if the U.S. would have to enter the war. Charles Drew played a major role in the future of medicine. He organized the collection and processing of blood plasma from several New York hospitals, and the shipments of these life-saving materials overseas to treat soldiers injured in the war. Drew helped collect around 14,500 pints of plasma. In 1941, Drew was once again on the front lines of another blood bank effort, this time it was for the American Red Cross. There he worked on developing a blood bank to be used for the U.S. military personnel. He did not stay there to long, Drew became frustrated with the military's racist order of segregating the blood donated by African Americans. Originally, the military did not want to use blood from African…
He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in medicine (“Frederick G. Banting- Biographical”). After graduating from university, he joined the Canadian Army Corps and fought in the First World War. He was awarded the Military Cross when the war ended for his bravery and determination under fire(“Sir Frederick Banting”). After the war ended, he became a medical practitioner for a short time. He studied orthopaedic medicine very closely.…
James Blundell has left a huge impact on the medical field. Along with his invention of blood transfusion, he has also left a huge impression on the field or surgery. Even in his later years, James was dealing with medical places. James had done a lot of great things during his lifetime that has an impact on the life we have…
At the rip age of only 24, in 1932 Dr. DeBakey had his medical degree in hand. He then moved on to complete two year of surgical training at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Before World War II, Cardiovascular surgery was mainly in Europe, so Deakey wet to study I…
It was just another lazy Tuesday during the scorching Arizona summer for me when I heard the most influential quote I had ever perceived. My family and I were watching the Popular show: America’s got Talent. Then it happened, A comedian with a stutter was giving his pre-audition spheel and how terribly difficult his life had become. Before he was done, the man by the name of Drew Lynch said at the end of his speech, “I believe that anyone is able to turn any negative into a positive”. This perked my ears up and really made me step back and take an indisputable look into my life. I had been very recently going through a challenging point in my life on whether or not to hang up the towel on playing baseball as I had not been able to make the…
During the mid-18th to late 19th-century medical education/training did not exist, during this time the practice of medicine was not seen as a profession. Everyone who had the desire to be physician could practice medicine, even without any scientific knowledge. According to Shi and Singh (2015), “from about 1800 to 1950, medical training was largely received through an individual apprenticeship with a practicing physician” and not through university education as is do it in the present (p. 87). In the United Stated (U.S.), during the preindustrial era, the American medicine was falling behind compared to the medical education, medical advances and research in Europe. Additionally, medical procedures in the U.S. were primitive and lack a scientific base to support them. “By 1800, only four medical schools existed in the U.S.: College of Philadelphia, King’s College, Harvard Medical School, and Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College” (Shi & Singh, 2015, p.87). The medical schools that existed during 1800 were owned and managed by physicians and lacked practical clinical education in hospitals, also required less than the actual years of education for graduation.…
Thousands of years ago bloodletting was practiced in many different ancient cultures. The Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians believed this practice cured many different diseases. Bloodletting was when the patient was pierced and drained several ounces of blood until they passed out. A physician named Galen dating back to ancient Greek culture, discovered that arteries were filled with blood and not air. Galen believed that blood didn’t circulate and thought that the balance of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile) was the cause of health and illness. The Emperor of China, Hwang-Ti, was the first to acknowledge the essential of veins and arteries. He also made the conclusion that “all blood is under control of…