Vivien Thomas - Cardiac pioneer. invented the cardiac bypass method used to cure Blue Baby Syndrome

There is an HBO movie about this resourceful, brilliant man named, Something the Lord Made, with a damned good Mos Def  (now Yassin Bey) in the starring role. The late Alan Rickman gives another of his dazzling performances as Dr. Alfred Blalock, Vivien Thomas' mentor and sometime adversary. This movie made me see Mos Def in a whole new light and I discovered another unsung, real-life, Black hero. Vivien was the man who became a janitor when his dream of going to medical school died, who then through determination became a surgical technician and who then invented a life-saving surgical technique that became standard procedure. A man without medical training who ended up training heart surgeons! A man who was denied his earned place in medical history for years but finally got his due. And if I say so myself, was a hottie on top of it all! Read about this driven soul.

http://blackamericaweb.com/2016/02/09/little-known-black-history-fact-vivien-thomas/






the famous portraits of Blalock AND Thomas that hang, rightfully, side by side in the hallowed halls of Johns Hopkins University