Vivien Thomas 'The Man Who Saved 1000 Babies'

“The Man Who Saved 1000 Babies’’, a man named Vivien Thomas, who was once discriminated harshly against, helped change the world and save lives in the field of cardiac surgery. Vivien Thomas money was down the drain in behalf of the Great Depression. Due to the fact that he was lacking money, he couldn’t attend college. Considering Thomas money vanished in the great depression, he needed to acquire a job. Due to this need, he attained a job as a lab assistant working for Dr. Blalock. Although his job description was “janitor”, Thomas worked sixteen hour days and took medical textbooks home to learn as much as he could. Thomas was doing something that a man of color, usually doesn’t have the opportunity for. Nevertheless, Dr. Blalock realized Thomas was extremely gifted in his work. The Dr. didn't pay attention to how others treated black people at the time and treated Thomas with respect. Blalock informed Thomas how to conduct lab experiments. Thomas commenced setting up experiments to test …show more content…
Helen Taussig challenged Blalock to find a way to help (Blue Baby Syndrome). The way this had to be fixed was to do heart surgery, which had never been done successfully. Thomas went back to the lab to figure out a way to help (Blue Baby Syndrome). He was forced to make tools, delicate enough to work with a heart. So once he figured out a way to help, he tested it hundreds of times on animals and Blalock only got to try it once. There was a baby named Eileen Saxon who was suffering from (Blue Baby Syndrome). Blalock had to do the surgery because Thomas was not a certified Doctor. Thomas was guiding Blalock through the surgery and when Blalock was finished with the surgery her skin turned a healthy pink instead of blue. Then tons of blue babies were saved because of Thomas’s method. They called it the Blalock -Taussig procedure. Thomas did not get credit until much later in his life. Eventually he got credit for what he