Vivien Thomas
Surgical technician who developed the blue baby operation
At a glance
- Inventor
- Vivien Thomas
- Life
- 1910–1985
- Birthplace
- Lake Providence, Louisiana
- Country
- United States
- Region
- United States
- Era
- 1900–1950
- Fields
- Medicine & Health
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 1 in this archive
What they did
Without a medical degree, Thomas designed the animal model, the instruments and the operative technique for the shunt that treated tetralogy of Fallot, then coached Alfred Blalock through the first human operation in 1944.
Historical context
The Depression wiped out his college savings; he took a job as a laboratory assistant at Vanderbilt and became the most skilled surgical experimentalist in Blalock's laboratory.
Obstacles
He was carried on the Johns Hopkins payroll as a janitor for years, was paid a technician's wage for surgical research, and was absent from the first published account of the operation.
The legacy
Johns Hopkins awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1976 and hung his portrait beside Blalock's. Cardiac surgery as a field begins substantially with this procedure.
The evidence
Vivien T. Thomas collection and Blalock laboratory records
Institutional recordPartners of the Heart: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock
Scholarship
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 0
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.