Surgeon, educator, administrator and medical advocate, Daniel Hale Williams III was born January 18, 1858 to a free Black family in Hollidaysburg, PA. He was the fifth of seven children. 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 African American family in town, the Andersons. Williams graduated high school from Janesville Classical Academy in 1878.
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. Palmer had been Surgeon General of the Wisconsin Regiments during the Civil War, and he championed Daniel’s pursuit of further formal education. In the late nineteenth century, few physicians received formal training at a medical school. Rather, most doctors learned their profession through serving apprenticeships with established physicians. Williams served the customary two-year apprenticeship with Dr. Palmer. After a two-year apprenticeship with Dr. Palmer, Williams was accepted at the Chicago Medical College, which later became affiliated with Northwestern University.
After graduating with a medical degree in 1883, Williams secured a competitive internship at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. Then he opened his own practice in an integrated neighborhood on Chicago's south side practicing medicine and surgery at Chicago's South Side Dispensary. At the same time, he held a position at Northwest University, as an instructor of anatomy, where one of his pupils was Charlie Mayo, future cofounder of the renowned Mayo Clinic. 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 worked for a time as a medical doctor for the City Railway Company.
“Doctor Dan,” as Williams was known, his practice began to grow, as did his reputation as a skilled surgeon. In 1883, he was one of only four African American doctors in the Chicago area. 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 African American physicians in the city at that time.
As late as 1890 African Americans could not gain admission to hospitals, except charity wards, and Black doctors could not aspire to hospital appointments. Dr. Williams met a young African American woman, Emma Reynolds, who had been refused admission by every nursing school in the area. This incident, along with the eagerness to try to overcome the effects of discrimination and prejudice, he proposed founding a new hospital and nursing school with race-blind policies. In January, 1891, he founded Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses. It was the nation's first African American-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, and seven of 175 applicants were accepted for the 18-month nurses’ training program, where Emma Reynolds and six others made up the first graduating class. 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. These initial years of Provident Hospital reflected Williams’ interracial vision. The hospital achieved several firsts such as having an interracial staff, providing training for African American nurses and doctors, and being Black-owned and controlled.
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. Many African Americans began to contribute to the institution and as a result of Douglass’s support, financial disaster was averted. Daniel 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.
That same year, a saloon brawl in Chicago brought Williams national attention. 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-year old remained alert and communicative upon his arrival. The surgeon, Daniel Hale Williams, 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. 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 multiple observers in an integrated setting to observe and assist. Dr. Williams had no access to X-rays, antibiotics, anesthetics, blood transfusions, or modern equipment to prevent Cornish’s lung from collapsing or to safeguard his heart. 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, not the heart muscle itself. Williams decided the heart muscle didn’t need sewing up, but he did suture the pericardium. It was a daring operation, the first time a surgeon had successfully entered the chest cavity and surgically explored the heart. He closed the remaining layers of the chest.
With the patient emerging in stable condition, James Cornish’s 51-day post-operative course involved a few complications, including coughing, and hiccupping. But James 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. This is one of the earliest successful surgeries involving intervention and exploration of the pericardium. Earlier figures like Francisco Romero (1801) and Henry Dalton (1891) performed related procedures. Williams published his technique and its success in the Medical Record in 1897. 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". Even though Henry Dalton operated in 1891, his report had not circulated widely, so Williams likely had no way of knowing about it. And Dr. Romero's work was published decades earlier, in a different country and medical network, not part of standard 19th-century U.S. references.
Williams became instantly famous, but 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. He was preparing to move to Washington in 1894 when he was wounded in the leg on a quail hunting trip in southern Illinois. An inflammation developed, and his life was threatened by the infection. By the time he went to Washington in September Williams was thin and frail.
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 Provident. He 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) as an alternative to the American Medical Association, which didn’t allow African-American membership. 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. In 1898, he married Alice Johnson and returned to Chicago, serving at Provident Hospital until 1912.
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. As an associate attending surgeon, he was held in high esteem by his White colleagues.
Among the honors and degrees conferred upon Williams during his lifetime, in 1909, Wilberforce University granted him an honorary L.L.D. degree, and in 1925, Howard University awarded him an honorary M.S. Perhaps the greatest honor bestowed on him, though, came in 1913, when Dr. Williams was inducted into the American College of Surgeons as a charter fellow, the first of his race. 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. 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. What makes Daniel Hale Williams important is not being “first” in a simplistic sense, but, performing a rare, successful heart-region operation in 1893, doing so under extreme medical limitations, building an institution that advanced Black medical training, he also pioneered care of post-traumatic injury to the spleen. 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. He left an indelible mark on several enduring American institutions and American medicine as a whole. Dr. Williams died August 4th 1931.