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Gallery: Pioneers

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Three surgeons standing in an operating room performing surgery with several nurses and attendants observing.
Portrait of a man with a mustache.
Three-quarter length, standing, left pose; holding papers.
Man standing with one hand in his pants pocket wearing a pocket watch.
Exterior of two-story brick building.
Three surgeons and two nurses wearing medical uniforms performing surgery on a patient in an operating room.
Physician seated in a chair tending to the leg of a seated patient with a nurse standing in the background.

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Portrait of a man with a mustache.

Daniel Hale Williams, M.D.

Daniel Hale Williams, M.D., (1856–1931) was a leading surgeon, educator, and founder of Provident Hospital and Training School in Chicago, the first black owned and operated hospital in the United States. Dr. Williams performed the world’s first open heart surgery in 1893 at Provident and in 1893 was appointed chief surgeon at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. He also served as professor of surgery at Howard University Medical Department until 1898, before returning to Provident.


Courtesy National Library of Medicine