Category: Surgery
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C. Walton Lillehei, father of open-heart surgery
Dr. Clarence Walton Lillehei (1918–1999) was born in Minneapolis, received his medical degree from the University of Minnesota in 1942, and spent his entire career on the staff of the University of Minnesota Medical School. In the early 1950s he began to experiment with cross-circulation, a technique in which the blood vessels of a patient…
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Francisco Graña, eminent Peruvian neurosurgeon
Francisco Graña (1879–1959) was a Peruvian neurosurgeon who once removed a subdural hematoma using 2,000-year-old tools, including a saw of volcanic obsidian glass and a bronze chisel, borrowed from the Peru National Museum of Archaeology. Born into a family of medical professionals, Graña studied medicine at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, graduating…
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James Hardy, heart and lung transplant pioneer
James D. Hardy was an American surgeon who performed the world’s first human lung transplant in 1963 and human heart transplant in 1964. Born in Alabama in 1918, Hardy obtained his medical degree from the University of Alabama in 1942. He served in the army during World War II, then returned to the University of…
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Yurii Voronoy, Ukrainian kidney transplant pioneer
Yurii Yurijevich Voronoy was born in 1896 in a village in the region of Poltava in Ukraine, where his father was a professor of mathematics. In World War I Voronoy was a volunteer corpsman in the Ukrainian contingent, and after the war he studied medicine in Kyiv. He then joined the department of surgery in…
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John Woodall, author of The Surgeon’s Mate
John Woodall was a seventeenth century English physician and Paracelsian chemist known for his writings on medicine and health. Born around 1570 in Warwickshire, he was apprenticed at the age of sixteen to a London barber surgeon but did not finish his apprenticeship. From the age of nineteen in 1589, he gained experience as a…
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The surgeon who invented the Penrose drain
Charles Bingham Penrose was born in Pennsylvania in 1862. Tall and athletic, he once traveled on horseback from Philadelphia to Niagara Falls and back. He also swam fifteen miles in the ocean in five hours. In 1897 on a hunting trip in Montana he killed a bear cub and was nearly mauled to death by…
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Pierre Fauchard (1678–1761), dentistry’s founding father
Brody FoglemanCristin GrantHarsh JhaNoel BrownleeSpartanburg, South Carolina, United States Dr. Pierre Fauchard was a French surgeon and dentist who worked in Paris.1 He is widely accepted as the father of dentistry because of his many important contributions to the discipline and is particularly well-known for his work Le Chirurgien Dentiste (The Surgeon Dentist). Before the…
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Thomas Curling (1811–1888)
George DuneaChicago, Illinois, United States The appointment of young Thomas Blizard Curling as assistant surgeon at the London Hospital through the influence and recommendation of his uncle, Sir William Blizard, raised eyebrows and caused at least some resentment, for he was barely twenty-one years old and did not yet even have an MD degree. Yet…
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Forgotten pioneers of pediatric cardiac surgery
Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States Credit for pioneering heart surgery in children is primarily given to Robert Gross of Boston Children’s Hospital and Alfred Blalock at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. However, two Chicago surgeons who saved many lives with their innovations in the same era have been largely forgotten. In the first half of…
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William Webster, the first modern Canadian academic anesthesiologist
Kush PatelAjax, Canada Until the early twentieth century, anesthetics were a black box, and even though ether and chloroform were commonly used, their physiological effects were little known and felt nothing short of wizardry.1 No wonder Dr. John Warren cried “this is no humbug!” on seeing a patient open his eyes for the first time…