The Black Scholars Index » Medicine

Dr. Charles R. Drew: First Black Surgeon to Serve on American Board of Surgery

Leshell Hatley — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:21:16 +0000

Charles Richard Drew (3 June 1904 – 1 April 1950) was an African-American physician, surgeon and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge to developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II. This allowed medics to save thousands of lives of the Allied forces. The research and development aspect of his blood storage work is disputed. Drew protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, as it lacked scientific foundation, an action which cost him his job. In 1943, Drew’s distinction in his profession was recognized when he became the first black surgeon selected to serve as an examiner on the American Board of Surgery.

Early Life

Drew was born to Richard Y. Drew and Nora Burrell in Washington, DC. He attended Meads Mill Elementary School, and began working as a paperboy selling copies of the Washington Times-Herald while attending school. In 1918, he enrolled at Dunbar High School, a racially segregated high school with a reputation for being one of the strongest academic Black public schools in the country. Drew’s sister Elsie, who was ailing with tuberculosis, died of pandemic influenza in 1920. Her death was said to influence his decision to study medicine.

Education

His athletic achievements helped win him a partial scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts. Drew became a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. He did graduate work at McGill University, Montreal, and Columbia University, New York, where he earned his PhD. He become the first African-American man to earn a degree of Doctor of Science in Medicine.

Academic Career

Drew became a researcher and general surgeon, teaching and practicing within medical schools and teaching hospitals. He worked and taught at Freedman’s Hospital, Morgan State University, Montreal General, and Howard University. Soon after he began his career, in 1943 he was invited as the first black to be an examiner for the American Board of Surgeons.

Blood Plasma for Great Britain Project

Dr. Charles Richard Drew

In late 1940, during World War II before the US entered the war, and just after earning his doctorate, Drew was recruited by John Scudder to help set up and administer an early prototype program for blood storage and preservation. He was to collect, test, and transport large quantities of blood plasma for distribution in Great Britain. Drew went to New York to direct the United States’ Blood for Britain project. The Blood for Britain project was a project to aid British soldiers and civilians by giving US blood to Great Britain.

Drew created a central location for the blood collection process where donors could go to give blood. He made sure all blood plasma was tested before it was shipped out. He ensured that only skilled personnel handled blood plasma to avoid the possibility of contamination. The Blood for Britain program operated successfully for five months, with total collections of almost 15,000 people donating blood, and with over 5,500 vials of blood plasma. As a result, the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association applauded Drew for his work.

End of Life

From 1939, Drew attended the annual free clinic at the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital in Tuskegee, Alabama. For the 1950 Tuskegee clinic, Drew and three other black physicians decided to drive rather than fly. Drew was driving around 8 a.m. on April 1. Still fatigued from spending the night before in the operating theater, Drew lost control of the vehicle. After careening into a field, the car somersaulted three times. The three other physicians suffered minor injuries. Drew was trapped with serious wounds; his foot had become wedged beneath the brake pedal. When reached by emergency technicians, Drew was in shock and barely alive due to severe leg injuries. Drew was taken to Alamance General Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina. He was pronounced dead a half hour after he first received medical attention. Drew’s funeral was held on April 5, 1950, at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

Urban Legend

A persistent urban legend holds that Drew was denied care—ironically, a blood transfusion—at a nearby hospital because of his race and bled to death. Dr. John Ford, one of the doctors traveling with Drew contradicted this in an interview: “We all received the very best of care. The doctors started treating us immediately. [...] He had a superior vena caval syndrome—blood was blocked getting back to his heart from his brain and upper extremities. To give him a transfusion would have killed him sooner. Even the most heroic efforts couldn’t have saved him. I can truthfully say that no efforts were spared in the treatment of Drew, and, contrary to popular myth, the fact that he was a Negro did not in any way limit the care that was given to him.”

Visit http://www.cdrewu.edu/about-cdu/dr-charles-drew for more information.

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Information from wikipedia.

Images from:

http://www.africamaat.com/CHARLES-RICHARD-DREW-1904-1950-Le

http://publicdomainclip-art.blogspot.com/2008/05/dr-charles-r-drew.html

James McCune Smith: First African-American to earn a Medical Degree and run a Pharmacy in the US

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:06:11 +0000

James McCune Smith (April 18, 1813 – November 17, 1865) was an American physician, apothecary, abolitionist, and author. He is the first African-American to earn a medical degree and to run a pharmacy in the United States. Smith wrote forcefully in refutation of the common misconceptions about race, intelligence, medicine, and society in general. His friends and colleagues in this movement were often famous, and consisted of many noted abolitionists, including, Frederick Douglass.

Early years

Smith was born to a self-emancipated mother and a white merchant father in New York City, New York. He attended the African Free School, where he is described as an “exceptionally bright student”. In the course of his studies, he was tutored by Rev. Peter Williams, Jr., an Episcopalian minister at St. Joseph’s Church in New York City, and who was also a graduate of the African Free School. Upon graduation, Smith tried to attend several American colleges, but was denied admission by each of them due to racial discrimination.

Education

Williams suggested that Smith attend the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Williams helped Smith raise money for his trip to Scotland and his subsequent education there. Smith was accepted to the university, where he later graduated at the top of his class. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1835, a master’s degree in 1836, and a medical degree in 1837. He then traveled from Glasgow to Paris to complete a brief internship.

Career

Medicine

Upon his return to New York City in 1837, Smith became the United States’ first professionally trained African-American physician. His practice spanned 25 years. In 1846, he was appointed the only doctor of the Free Negro Orphan Asylum where he worked for more than twenty years. He opened what has been called the first black pharmacy in the United States, which was located on West Broadway.

Abolitionist Movement

While in Scotland, Smith was a member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society. When he returned to New York, he became a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1850, he was one of the key organizers of New York’s resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act as a member of the Committee of Thirteen. During the mid 1850s, he helped Frederick Douglass to establish the National Council of Colored People.

Essays and writings

Smith was a prolific writer and essayist. Among other works, he wrote the introduction to Fredrick Douglass’ second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), which constituted an important move away from seeking approval and authentication from white abolitionists in African-American accounts of slavery. In this introduction, he writes:

“…the worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down energy, truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right.”

Smith also wrote from the view of a trained doctor. The physician and abolitionist wrote an essay that refuted the theories of race in Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia”. He also wrote essays that rejected phrenology and homeopathy. Yet another essay critiqued the U.S. Census of 1840 on racial and statistical grounds.

Personal life

Smith was appointed professor of anthropology at Wilberforce College, Ohio, the oldest African-American college in the United States. But Smith was too ill to take the position. He died in Long Island, New York two years later at the age of 52, just nineteen days before the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery throughout the country.Smith was survived by his widow, Malvina, and five children.

Danny Glover as James McCune Smith

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Information obtained wikipedia.

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing: Author of The Isis Paper

Leshell Hatley — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:14:17 +0000

Frances Cress Welsing (born March 18, 1935 in Chicago, Illinois) is an African American psychiatrist practicing in Washington, D.C. She is noted for her “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation” (1970), which explores the practice of white supremacy. She is the author of The Isis Papers; The Keys to the Colors (1991).

Education

Antioch College, B.S., 1957; Howard University College of Medicine, M.D., 1962.

The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation

Cress Welsing states that this system is practiced by the global white minority, on both conscious and unconscious levels, to ensure their genetic survival by any means necessary. According to Cress Welsing, this system attacks people of color, particularly people of African descent, in the nine major areas of people’s activity: economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war. Cress Welsing believes that it is imperative that people of color, especially people of African descent, understand how the system of white supremacy works in order to dismantle it and bring true justice to planet Earth.

In The Isis Papers she postulates the pseudoscientific supremacist hypothesis that white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants. (See Melanin theory.) She posits that they may have been forcibly expelled from Africa, among other possibilities. Welsing proposes that, because it is so easy for pure whiteness to be genetically lost during interracial breeding, light-skinned peoples developed an aggressive colonial urge and their societies dominated others militarily in order to preserve this light-skinned purity. Welsing ascribes certain inherent and behavioral differences between black and white people to a “melanin deficiency” in white people:

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On both St. Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nuts…. If his sweetheart ingests “chocolate with nuts,” the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male…. Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation — in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.

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Welsing also claims that the prevalence of high blood pressure among African Americans is due to the fact that melanin exchanges “black photons” with other electrons and, therefore, picks up the negative energy vibrations from white people.

Debate with Dr. William Shockley

Back in 1974, Welsing debated Dr. William Shockley, the author of a theory of black genetic inferiority, on national public television. She is responsible for generating public discussion throughout the United States about the possible effects of melanin on behavior and culture. Black authors, psychiatrists, and lecturers have written studies and books on this subject, and a series of conferences about it have been held on the East and West Coasts.

Inspiration for Rap Group Public Enemy

In the early 1990s Welsing’s theory caused a stir in the media after a publicist for the popular rap group Public Enemy sent music reviewers copies of her 1970 essay along with advance tapes of the group’s new album, Fear of a Black Planet. Their publicist, Harry Allen, said in the Washington Post that Welsing’s paper “should be seen as some of the inspiration” for the album, the title song of which deals with racial purity and miscegenation (racial mixing).

Criticism

Welsing has been criticized for promoting an overtly racist ideology. She has also been criticized for claims that black male homosexuality is consciously imposed on the black man by the white man to destroy the black family, that black homosexuality is a sign of weakness and that homosexual patterns of behavior are simply expressions of black male self-submission to other males in the area of sex, as well as in other areas such as economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, and war.

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Information courtesy of wikipedia.

Keith L. Black, MD – Chairman and Professor, Department of Neurosurgery Director, Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute

Leshell Hatley — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:58:11 +0000

Keith L. Black, MD serves as Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and Director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He also holds the title of (Full) Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery. An internationally renowned neurosurgeon and scientist, Dr. Black joined Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in July 1997 and was awarded the Ruth and Lawrence Harvey Chair in Neuroscience in November of that year.

Career

Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Black served on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) faculty for 10 years where he was a (Full) Professor of Neurosurgery. In 1992 he was awarded the Ruth and Raymond Stotter Chair in the Department of Surgery and was Head of the UCLA Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program.

Pioneering Research

Dr. Black pioneered research on designing ways to open the blood-brain barrier, enabling chemotherapeutic drugs to be delivered directly into the tumor. His work in this field received the Jacob Javits award from the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health in June 2000. Dr. Black, along with patients undergoing the first clinical trials of the drug RMP-7, was profiled in 1996 on the PBS program, The New Explorers, in an episode called “Outsmarting the Brain”. Below is a clipped from BET.com posted just a few days ago:

Dr. Black’s other groundbreaking research has focused on developing a vaccine to enhance the body’s immune response to brain tumors, use of gene arrays to develop molecular profiles of tumors, the use of optical technology for brain mapping, and the use of focused microwave energy to noninvasively destroy brain tumors. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in the Fall 1997 special edition “Heroes of Medicine”.

Dr. Black serves on the editorial boards of the Neurological Research, Gene Therapy and Molecular Biology, Neurosurgery Quarterly and Frontiers In Bioscience. He was on the National Institutes of Health’s Board of Scientific Counselors for Neurological Disorders and Stroke and was appointed to the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health from 2000 to 2004. He was also selected as a committee member of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Independent Citizens Oversight Committee from 2004-2006. He is also a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Neurosurgical Society of America and the Academy of Neurological Surgery. He also is a Founding Member of the North American Skull Base Society.
Dr. Black has a unique ability to combine cutting-edge research and an extremely busy surgical practice. Since 1987, he has performed more than 5,000 operations for resection of brain tumors.

In 2009 Black published his autobiography, co-authored with Arnold Mann, entitled Brain Surgeon. New York Times reviewer Abigail Zuger described the book as a “fascinating, if somewhat stilted, memoir”.The Publishers Weekly review commented that the book

“examines racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon” and “alternat[es] incisive writing about incisions with his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational.”

Early Life and Education

Keith Black was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. His mother was a teacher and his father was the principal at a racially segregated elementary school in Auburn, Alabama; unable to integrate the student body, Black’s father instead integrated the faculty, raised standards, and brought more challenging subjects to the school. Unwilling to send their son to the substandard segregated high school in Auburn, Black’s parents found new jobs and relocated the family to Shaker Heights, Ohio. Black attended Shaker Heights High School. Already interested in medicine, Black was admitted to an apprenticeship program for minority students at Case Western Reserve University, and then became a teenaged lab assistant for Frederick Cross and Richard Jones (inventors of the Cross-Jones artificial heart valve) at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cleveland. At 17, he won an award in a national science competition for research on the damage done to red blood cells in patients with heart-valve replacements. It was during this time that he published his first scientific paper, which earned a Westinghouse Science Award. He completed an accelerated college program at the University of Michigan and earned both his undergraduate and medical degrees in six years. He completed his internship in general surgery and residency in neurological surgery at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.

To learn more about Dr. Black, please view his CV here.

For an appointment, a second opinion or more information, please call 1-800-CEDARS-1 (1-800-233-2771) or e-mail the center.

Louis W. Sullivan, M.D.: Founding Dean and 1st President of Morehouse School of Medicine

Leshell Hatley — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:33:10 +0000

Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., is the founding Dean and first President of Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM). With the exception of his tenure as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 1989 to 1993, Dr. Sullivan was President of MSM for more than two decades. On July 1, 2002, he left the presidency, but continues to serve on the MSM Board of Trustees, to teach, and to assist in national fund-raising activities on behalf of the school.

Education

A native of Atlanta, Dr. Sullivan graduated magna cum laude from Morehouse College in 1954, and earned his medical degree, cum laude, from Boston University School of Medicine in 1958. He is certified in internal medicine and hematology (the study of blood, the blood-forming organs, and blood diseases).

Career

Dr. Sullivan was instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 1963-64, and assistant professor of medicine at Seton Hall College of Medicine from 1964- 65. In 1966, he became co-director of hematology at Boston University Medical Center and, a year later, founded the Boston University Hematology Service at Boston City Hospital. Dr. Sullivan joined the Boston University School of Medicine in 1966 and remained until 1975, holding positions as assistant professor of medicine, associate professor of medicine, and professor of medicine.

Starting Morehouse School of Medicine

Dr. Sullivan became the founding Dean and Director of the Medical Education Program at Morehouse College in 1975. The program became The School of Medicine at Morehouse College in 1978, admitting its first 24 students to a two year program in the basic medical sciences. In 1981, the school became independent from Morehouse College and became Morehouse School of Medicine, with Dr. Sullivan as Dean and President. In 1983, MSM became a member of the Atlanta University Center. MSM was fully accredited as a four year medical school in April 1985 and awarded its first 16 M.D. degrees in May of that year.

Serving as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Dr. Sullivan left MSM in 1989 to accept an appointment by President George H.W. Bush to head HHS. In this post, Dr. Sullivan managed the federal agency responsible for the major health, welfare, food and drug safety, medical research and income security programs serving the American people. In January 1993, he returned to MSM and resumed the office of president.

Service

Dr. Sullivan is Chairman of the board of the National Health Museum in Washington, D.C. and is also Chairman of the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce (funded by the Kellogg Foundation). He also serves as Chair of the President’s Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and is Co-Chair of the President’s Commission on HIV and AIDS.

A member of numerous medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the National Medical Association, Dr. Sullivan was the founding President of the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools. He is a former member of the Joint Committee on Health Policy of the Association of American Universities and the national Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities.

He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Watch a clip from his speaking tour entitled “The Symphony of Health Care Delivery” – an extremely relevant message!

[HBCU Presidents] Dr. George C. Wright: Prairie View A&M University

Leshell Hatley — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:59:02 +0000

Dr. George C. Wright, noted African-American scholar, is the seventh President of Prairie View A&M University, the second oldest public institution of higher education in Texas. Offering baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral degrees through nine colleges and schools, Dr. Wright now leads the 129-year old HBCU with an established reputation for producing thousands of African American engineers, nurses and educators. A member of the Texas A& M University System, the University is dedicated to fulfilling its land-grant mission of achieving excellence in teaching, research and service.

Education

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Dr. Wright received his bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in history from the University of Kentucky and his doctorate in history from Duke University. In 2004 Dr. Wright was awarded an honorary doctorate of Letters from the University of Kentucky.

Prior to joining the Prairie View A&M University family, Dr. Wright was Executive Vice-President for academic affairs and provost at the University of Texas at Arlington. Prior to assuming that post, he was provost and vice president for academic affairs with increasing responsibilities from 1995 to 1998. In 1993, he joined the faculty at Duke University as vice provost for university programs and director of the Afro-American studies program at Duke University. At Duke, he also held the William R. Kenan, Jr., Chair in American History. From 1980 to 1993, he served as an assistant professor, associate professor, professor, and was the holder of the Mastin Gentry White Professorship of Southern History, and vice provost for undergraduate education at the University of Texas at Austin. His wealth of experience in higher education began as an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky in 1977.

Honors & Awards

Dr. Wright has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, grants and awards. At the University of Texas at Austin, he received the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence, the “Eyes of Texas” Award for excellence in service and the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Award for “Outstanding Black Faculty Member.” He was awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship at Harvard University and was the Friar Society Centennial Fellow for Teaching Excellence, the Silver Spurs Centennial Teaching Fellow and the Lillian and Tom B. Rhodes Centennial Teaching Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.

In 2008, an annual $2,500 cholarship was established in his honor, The George C. Wright Scholarship.

To his credit, Dr. Wright is the author of three books, which include: A History of Blacks in Kentucky: In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980, Volume II; Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings”, and the Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930.

He was presented the Governors Award by the Kentucky Historical Society for Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings”, and the Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky. He currently has another book in progress, a biography of Robert Charles O’Hara Benjamin: A “Forgotten” Afro-American Leader and has published numerous articles, chapters in books and essays.

Active in his community, Dr. Wright has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the City of Arlington Chamber Foundations and the Medical Center of Arlington. He has also served as a member of the Editorial Board for the Southern Biography Series at Louisiana State University, the Board of Editors of the Journal of Southern History and the Southern Historical Association Program Committee.

Dr. George C. Wright on Juneteenth:

To read a 2006 interview with Dr. Wright, click here.

Information obtained from Prairie View’s website.