Happy #VivienThomasDay! Today marks 110 years since the birth of Dr. Vivien Thomas. Although he never went to medical school, the surgical techniques he developed, such as the BTT shunt, are the foundation on which congenital heart surgery today was built. #CHD #ESCCongress2020

After graduating from high school, Thomas enrolled at Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State College (now @TSUedu) as a pre-med. Unfortunately, the Great Depression depleted his savings, so he left college and found work as an assistant in Alfred Blalock's lab at @VUmedicine.

Blalock was doing research in traumatic shock and needed Thomas to help perform surgery on lab animals. Thomas learned quickly, and Blalock gave him more and more independence in the lab. Years later, surgical trainees who worked with Thomas would marvel at his surgical skill.

Thomas proved to be so indispensible to Blalock that in 1937, Blalock turned down an offer to become Surgeon-in-Chief at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital when he was told that Thomas would not be able to continue to work for him as their hospital did not allow Black employees.

His reputation growing, it wasn't long before Blalock was offered another Chief position, this time at @HopkinsMedicine. Hopkins was more progressive (it was one of the first to accept women) and Blalock convinced Thomas to move his family to Baltimore to run his new lab there.

It was at @HopkinsMedicine that Helen Taussig proposed to Blalock a possible surgical solution to tetralogy of Fallot, the "blue baby syndrome". Thomas ran with the idea and eventually succeeded in developing the groundbreaking shunt operation that has saved thousands of lives.

Blalock and Taussig gained wide fame for the "Blalock-Taussig shunt" while Thomas remained behind the scenes, his contribution largely unacknowledged.

Thomas continued to supervise the surgical labs at Hopkins for over 35 yrs. Although fame eluded him, his achievements were well-recognized by his surgical colleagues. In 1976, he finally became Dr. Vivien Thomas when Johns Hopkins awarded him the honorary degree, Doctor of Laws.

Vivien Thomas's memoir, Partners of the Heart, was published in 1985, but it was probably Katie McCabe's 1989 profile of Thomas in the @Washingtonian, Like Something the Lord Made, that finally brought his story to a wide audience.

In 2004, @HBO made Thomas's story into a feature-length film, Something the Lord Made, starring Mos Def as Vivien Thomas and Alan Rickman ( #RIP) as Alfred Blalock. Definitely worthwhile pandemic viewing! https://www.amazon.com/Something-Lord-Made-Alan-Rickman/dp/B01MSPNF8S