Surgeon, educator, administrator and medical advocate, Daniel Hale Williams III was born January 18, 1858 to a free Black family in Hollidaysburg, PA. His father died of tuberculosis when he was eleven, and his mother, Sara Price Williams, apprenticed Daniel to a shoemaker in Baltimore, Maryland. He soon tired of the occupation he ran away to rejoin her at her new home in Rockford, Illinois. There are conflicting stories as to when his family moved to Janesville, Wisconsin. Nevertheless, the family moved and to support himself and mother Daniel worked as a barber. While there he and his mother lived with the only Black family in town, the Andersons. Williams graduated high school from Janesville Academy.
With the support of the family patriarch, Charles Anderson, also a barber, he encouraged and supported the young Daniel in his education. At first, Daniel studied law and music, playing the bass violin, but in 1878, Williams’s interest in medicine began when he worked in the office of Henry Palmer, a Wisconsin surgeon. Williams who invited him to become an apprentice. Palmer had been Surgeon General of the Wisconsin Regiments during the Civil War, and he championed Daniel’s pursuit of further formal education. After a two-year apprenticeship with Dr. Palmer, Williams was accepted at the Chicago Medical College, which later became affiliated with Northwestern University.
He graduated with a medical degree in 1883. He interned for a year at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, then opened his own practice in an integrated neighborhood on Chicago's south side. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams began practicing medicine and surgery at Chicago's South Side Dispensary. Williams secured a competitive internship at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. After completing the internship and establishing his practice, he immediately recognized how lucky he had been, in being able to pursue a rigorous formal education. The opportunities for advanced training were minimal, since few internship spots were open to Blacks. He maintained his connections with the Chicago Medical College during the early period of his career, serving as an anatomy instructor from 1885-1888 and served as surgeon to the City Railway Company.
During this period, he gained a reputation as a skilled surgeon and was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Health in 1889. Other notable appointments for Dr. Williams included the Protestant Orphan Asylum. These were very unique accomplishments for the time, considering that there were very few Black doctors at this point in Black American history. Williams still faced a problem. He could operate outpatient surgeries at the South Side Dispensary, but he needed hospital privileges to perform more complicated inpatient surgeries. None of the established hospitals in Chicago granted privileges to a Black surgeon. Dr. Williams was in private practice in the fall of 1890, just one of four Black physicians in the city at that time.
In 1891, he founded Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses. It was the nation's first Black-owned and operated hospital in America, treating both Black and White patients. The initial hospital was a three-story brick building, at the corner of 29th Street and Dearborn Avenue. Provident Hospital opened for service on May 4, 1891. Williams hired both White and Black staff, and secured the assistance of several prominent physicians in the area. Provident Hospital and Training School gave Black doctors and nurses an opportunity to practice medicine at a time when most medical and training facilities excluded them because of their race. Over time, the hospital gradually evolved into a Black institution, reflecting the increasing segregation of the city. By 1915, 93 percent of the patients were Black. By 1916, almost all the staff physicians were Black, and all the nursing staff, except for their supervisor, were Black.
Williams’ approach to fundraising had success in the hospital’s early years and even drew the attention of national figures. At the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, Frederick Douglass gave a well-publicized address and donated the proceeds, in-person, to Provident. These initial years of Provident reflected Williams’ interracial vision. The hospital achieved several firsts such as having an interracial staff, providing training for Black nurses and doctors, and being Black-owned and controlled. Williams was amongst the first doctors to adopt sterilization practices to reduce and prevent the transmission of germs. Provident achieved an 87% patient recovery rate and grew substantially during the period that Williams’ oversaw the hospital.
In July 1893, James Cornish fell to the floor with a stab wound to his left upper chest area. Rushed to nearby Provident Hospital, a hospital that opened just two years prior the 24-yearold remained alert and communicative upon his arrival. The surgeon, Daniel Hale Williams, founder of the hospital immediately examined the patient and opted initially for what was standard of care at the time: close observation. The leading authorities of the day had all prohibited surgical exploration or intervention anywhere near the heart. By the next morning, though, Cornish was having severe chest pains and was in early shock. Open heart surgery was generally avoided due to the high risk of infection and subsequent death.
Dr. Williams elected to open up the young man’s chest and gathered six physician colleagues—four White and two Black—to observe and assist. Dr. Williams had no access to X-rays, antibiotics, anesthetics, blood transfusions, or modern equipment. He noted that the cardiac muscle was only slightly injured but that the pericardium had suffered a laceration about 1¼ inches in length. There was no hemorrhage from either the heart or the pericardium. Dr. Williams cut a small hole into Cornish's chest using a scalpel. He then repaired a severed artery and a tear in the sac surrounding the heart. He closed the remaining layers of the chest and applied a dry dressing, with the patient emerging in stable condition.
James Cornish’s 51-day post-operative course involved a few complications, including coughing, and hiccupping, but Cornish suffered no peri-operative infection and the young man was discharged in good condition on August 30th. Dr. Daniel Hale Williams remarkable surgery, was a success. Cornish went on to live for decades after his groundbreaking surgery. Williams first consulted with the National Library of Medicine, confirming that no known other cases or reports existed. He summarized his own efforts by declaring, “this case is the first successful or unsuccessful case of suture of the pericardium that has ever been recorded". The operation was only the third such procedure, involving intervention and exploration of the pericardium. Williams published his technique and its success in the Medical Record in 1897.
Because a Black man had performed the procedure, the story gained some sensation, but it also garnered a backlash, with many in the press and traditional academia choosing to ignore it. During the year, President Grover Cleveland appointed Dr. Williams as Surgeon-in-Chief at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he simultaneously served as a professor of surgery at Howard University. Freedmen’s Hospital had unique standing within the capital, and within the larger Black community. The institution was a product of the Civil War, as Blacks seeking refuge from the war and its consequences flooded Washington, DC.
Upon his arrival in Washington, D.C., Williams found a hospital in major need of reform. Under Williams’ leadership, the hospital was transformed from being considered a “poor man’s retreat” into a modern hospital. He reorganized Freedmen’s into specific departments to match specific patient and treatment needs—medical, surgical, obstetrical, gynecological, genitourinary, chest and throat, and dermatology departments. Dr. Williams also founded a more rigorous nurse training school, modeled on the approach at ProvidentHe completely overhauled the approach to sterilization; instituted regular surgical rounds to train surgeons in the latest techniques; introduced standardized ambulance services. These efforts resulted in significant improvement in the hospital’s mortality rate.
In 1895, Williams and 11 other Black professionals founded the National Negro Medical Association of Physicians, Surgeons, Dentists, and Pharmacists—later known as the National Medical Association (NMA). Williams was offered the presidency of the new organization but declined, instead agreeing to serve as vice-president. The group aspired to create a society that would uplift Black practitioners and have an impact on the lives of all Blacks. Since Blacks were excluded from the American Medical Association at that time, the NMA provided an organizational home, and the association quickly demanded that the Association strive for health equity across all races.
Perhaps Williams’ most controversial enterprise while in Washington, D.C., was his hosting of public surgeries at Freedmen’s Hospital as an attempt to overcome the stigma that Blacks held against hospitals in general, and against the fears of the general public of Black practitioners in particular. On a series of Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m., Williams opened one of the hospital’s amphitheaters to the public. There, he and other Black surgeons and nurses would perform intricate surgeries before a lay and professional audience. The events drew praise and criticism, with some calling them bold and courageous, and others calling them a threat to patient privacy and unethical self-advertisement.
From 1900-1906, Williams was also attending physician at Cook County Hospital. As a charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913, he was the first and only Black member for many years. He continued to promote quality training of Black physicians and nurses. There was a huge need for a medical center in the South. In 1899, George Hubbard, dean and president of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, TN invited Williams to hold clinics where Williams would see patients and perform surgeries. Williams hosted the teaching clinics for nearly 20 years. The visits bolstered Meharry’s profile, which had a 60 percent increase in enrollment once the clinics were established. After Williams resigned from Provident Hospital in 1912, he was appointed staff surgeon at St. Luke's Hospital, one of Chicago’s wealthiest and most prominent hospitals.
Among his many honors, he was named the American College of Surgeons first Black fellow. A gifted surgeon, a pioneer in the establishment of hospitals and nurse training schools, a skillful administrator, and a dedicated clinical teacher, Dr. Williams paved the way for generations of Black physicians. He left an indelible mark on several enduring American institutions and American medicine as a whole. A number of his contemporaries, both friendly and unfriendly, called him the greatest Black physician of his day, acknowledging his remarkable skill, his social vision, and his integrity. Williams left his legacy on Provident, Freedmen’s, St. Luke’s Hospitals, Northwestern, Meharry, and Howard, and on countless other institutions and practitioners that followed in his footsteps.