Dr. Vivian Thomas was born with the skill to repair broken hearts.
With the mind of a scientist and the skills of a carpenter, he is now one of the most influential heart surgeons in the world.
Thomas never attended medical school. He couldn’t even afford to attend college.
But in 1944, he orchestrated one of the landmark procedures in the history of cardiac medicine.
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Thomas guided his mentor, Dr. Alfred Blalock, to the first successful surgery to repair the heart of a baby suffering from Tetralogy of Fallot, also known as Blue Baby Syndrome.
“Blalock knew what he had, and what he had was the Michael Jordan of lab surgery,” Thomas’ nephew, Dr. Coco Eaton, told FOX News Digital said in a telephone interview.
Vivian Thomas plays a young research assistant. (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Sisters by Heart)
Eaton is the team physician for Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays.
Dr. Blalock was chairman of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the most famous physicians in the nation.
Still, he put his career, the future of heart surgery, and the life of his 18-month-old baby in the hands of a former carpenter with a high school diploma.
“What he had was Michael Jordan operated on in a lab.”
Mr Eaton said his “humble” uncle never talked about his career at the forefront of cardiac surgery.
He first learned of Thomas’s prestige in the early 1980s, when his uncle offered to give him a ride to a medical school interview at Johns Hopkins University.
A portrait of Thomas hung on the wall. He was received warmly, even reverently, by the school staff.
[1945DrAlfredBlalockChiefSurgeonatJohnHopkinsHospitalinBaltimore[1945年のアルフレッド・ブラロック博士、ボルチモアのジョン・ホプキンス病院の主任外科医。 (Getty Images)
Eaton grew up attending family cookouts held at Thomas’ Fourth of July home in Baltimore, Maryland.
It wasn’t until Eaton walked in his uncle’s shadow that he realized there was something special about the man sweating at the grill on Fourth of July.
“The tongs he used to flip hot dogs and hamburgers were modified surgical clamps that he designed himself,” Eaton said.
Thomas had the audacity to try to make a better spatula.
He also had the gift of teaching the world’s best surgeons how to stitch new life into the hearts of dying infants.
Postdoctoral researchers are paid as administrators.
Vivian Theodore Thomas was born on August 29, 1910 in Lake Providence or New Iberia, Louisiana, to Willard Maceo and Mary Alice (Eaton) Thomas.
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He grew up in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated with honors from Pearl High School in 1929.
He worked as a carpenter and dreamed of attending university and then medical school.
The front page of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper, published on October 24, 1929, the day of the first Wall Street Crash on “Black Thursday,” with the headline, “Wall Street Panic as Stock Market Crash.” (FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
There were different ideas in the world. The stock market crash of 1929 wiped out his college savings, Thomas wrote in his autobiography.
Instead, he found work as a research assistant for Dr. Blalock at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
He proved to be an intuitive scientist and surgeon.
“Thomas rapidly mastered complex surgical techniques and research methodologies.”
“Thomas rapidly mastered complex surgical techniques and research methodologies,” the school writes in its online biography.
The institute said today that due to “institutional racism,” “Thomas was classified as a custodian and paid no compensation, despite doing postdoctoral work in Blalock’s lab by the mid-1930s.” “I was also paid,” he admitted.
Still, Thomas’ genius could not be contained by a title or a number on a pay stub.
Eaton said that because of his mechanical aptitude, “he was able to take Blalock’s ideas and make them a reality.”
Dr. Blalock and Vivian Thomas’ research into the trauma caused by crush syndrome is credited with saving thousands of lives in World War II. (HUM Images/Universal Images Group, Getty Images)
Meanwhile, German air raids on Britain in the early part of World War II further increased the need to deal with a phenomenon known as crush syndrome.
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Thomas and Blalock conducted groundbreaking research into the causes of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock, Vanderbilt reports.
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“This research later evolved into crush syndrome research, which saved the lives of thousands of soldiers on the battlefields of World War II.”
In 1941, Blalock was offered the position of chair of surgery at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.
He insisted that his talented research partners join him.
“Blalock and Thomas ignored medical taboos against cardiac surgery and began experimental work in vascular and cardiac surgery,” Vanderbilt added.
A legendary day in medicine
Ellen Saxon was just 18 months old when Dr. Blalock brought her to the operating table with a fatal heart defect commonly known as blue baby syndrome.
It was November 29, 1944, a landmark day in the history of heart surgery.
“Until that day, most infants and children with Tetralogy of Fallot had no real hope of cure,” Johns Hopkins University wrote in its online account about the event.
Vivian Thomas pioneered the “Blue Baby” procedure in November 1944, a revolutionary development in the history of heart surgery. (Courtesy of Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University)
But Eaton said Thomas “perfected” the technique for repairing defective hearts during hundreds of demonstrations and experiments with dogs.
The exercise revealed that new equipment was needed for the surgery to be successful. Thomas conceived, designed, and produced them.
Among his innovations was a precise precision clamp that could stitch together two small blood vessels.
It was the first time I had sewn up a blood vessel the size of angel pasta.
“The clamp had to stop the blood flow, but not injure the delicate tissue,” Eaton said.
The plan was for Dr. Blalock to practice using Thomas’ technique on animals before operating on human infants.
Baby Ellen’s condition rapidly deteriorated. She was rushed to the operating room, with Blalock leading the surgical team and Thomas watching from the gallery.
Eaton describes the dramatic events that followed.
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“It’s a very complicated operation. It’s the first time I’ve sewn up a blood vessel the size of angel hair pasta,” the doctor said.
Dr. Blalock needed help from top experts in the field.
“Blalock saw Thomas on the balcony and told him to come down and stand next to him. So Thomas came down and stood behind him and basically said to him, ‘Put your hands over here. Sew it towards the other side and bring it back with this’ method.'”
Thomas had skills and knowledge that they had not yet learned.
“I literally walked Dr. Blalock through the entire procedure,” said Eaton, the research assistant.
The Heart Doctor Hall of Fame cast witnessed a medical miracle.
Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig, a pioneer in cardiac medicine, brought the baby to Dr. Blalock’s attention and assisted in the procedures ordered by the lab’s researchers. Chief resident Dr. William Longmire later helped found his UCLA School of Medicine.
Dr. Denton Cooley, a medical resident, made medical history in 1969 by successfully implanting the first artificial heart into a human body.
Dr. Denton Cooley (top left) speaks at a press conference in Houston, Texas in 1968. He and her team of doctors transplanted the heart of a 15-year-old girl into Everett Thomas, 47, of Phoenix, Arizona. While a resident at Johns Hopkins University in 1944, Cooley conducted the first successful surgery to repair the defective heart of an infant suffering from Blue Baby Syndrome, when laboratory researcher Bevin Thomas led a team of talented surgeons. I watched him do it. (Getty Images)
Thomas had no title or pedigree like the others in the operating room.
But he had skills and knowledge that they had not yet learned.
“Even if I had never seen surgery before, Vivian made it look so simple that I could do it,” Cooley said in an interview with Washington magazine 45 years later.
The surgery caused an immediate sensation in the medical community and popular media. But Blalock and Taussig got all the credit. This surgery was actually named the “Blalock-Taussig Shant.”
The best surgeon in the room was in danger of being forgotten.
Surgeon’s pride
Dr. Eaton said of his uncle, “He had a great mind and great hands, which is a rare combination.” “He was a genius.”
Thomas was finally awarded an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1976, joined the faculty as instructor of surgery that same year, and retired in 1979.
Without proper training or licensure, Thomas (center) had to guide his research partner Dr. Alfred Blalock (left) step-by-step through the first “blue baby” surgery. Pediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig (right) assisted in this process. (Courtesy of Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University)
“Today, in operating rooms around the world, outstanding surgeons trained by Vivian Thomas are performing life-saving surgeries,” Morehouse School of Medicine wrote in an online testimony.
Vivian Thomas died in Baltimore on November 26, 1985, after suffering from pancreatic cancer. He was 75 years old.
In his later years, Dr. Thomas worked on his autobiography. “Partners of the Heart: The Work of Vivian Thomas and Alfred Blalock” was published shortly after his death.
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Since then, he has received well-deserved praise.
His books and dramatic stories inspired the HBO Emmy Award-winning film “Something the Road Maid” and the PBS documentary “Partners of the Heart.”
The life-saving procedure he demonstrated under life-saving pressure in 1944 has since been renamed the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas Shunt.
This surgery has saved the lives of thousands of babies from heart defects that were once a death sentence.
“Many people today say with pride, ‘Vivian Thomas taught me how to operate.'”
Thomas missed the chance to go to medical school. But his destiny apparently had something deeper planned for him.
“If I had gone to medical school, I probably wouldn’t have done this kind of work,” Dr. Eaton said.
“Things worked out well for him and for the betterment of humanity. We all benefited from his work.”
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The beaming nephew added: “Many people today say with pride, ‘I learned surgery from Vivian Thomas.'”
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