Dr. Vivien T. Thomas
Supervisor of 
Surgical Research Laboratories
HBO.com

Biography (1910 - 1985)

"Vivien Thomas was born in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1910, the son of a carpenter. His family moved to Nashville, where Vivien graduated with honors from Pearl High School, one of the country’s top high schools. In 1929, as he was preparing for college and medical school, Thomas’ bank failed with the onset of the Great Depression, and his entire savings was wiped out. With no means for education, he took a job as a laboratory technician at Vanderbilt University’s medical school, working for Dr. Alfred Blalock. 

Thomas still hoped to save money for his own medical degree, but the Depression worsened and the research with Blalock grew. Soon Thomas was working 16 hours a day in the laboratory, performing operations on animals that would advance Blalock’s studies of high blood pressure and traumatic shock. For this work, Thomas invented a heavy spring device that could apply varying levels of pressure. Their work at Vanderbilt created a new understanding of shock, showing that shock was linked to a loss of fluid and blood volume. 

When Blalock became chief surgeon at Johns Hopkins University’s medical school in 1941, he insisted that Vivien Thomas be hired to join his team there. At Johns Hopkins, Thomas and Blalock pioneered the field of heart surgery with a procedure to alleviate a congenital heart defect, the Tetralogy of Fallot (“blue baby syndrome”). Sufferers faced brutally short life expectancies. Working with cardiologist Helen Taussig, Blalock and Thomas developed an operation that would deliver more oxygen to the blood and relieve the constriction caused by the heart defect. Thomas tested the procedure  a refinement of one that they had created in laboratory dogs -- on animals to make sure it would work. In 1944, with Thomas advising Blalock, the first “blue baby” operation was successfully performed on 15-month-old Eileen Saxon.

Thomas was a key partner in hundreds of “blue baby” operations, performing pre- and post-operation procedures on the patients as well as advising in the operating room. At the same time, he continued to manage Blalock’s ongoing laboratory research. 

As head of the Hopkins surgical research laboratory, Thomas also taught a generation of surgeons and lab technicians. The residents and research fellows who worked with Thomas testified to his unique abilities and his dedication.

After Blalock died in 1964, Thomas assumed more teaching and administrative responsibilities, and continued to supervise Hopkins’ surgical research laboratories. In 1971, top surgeons from around the country paid tribute to Thomas and commemorated his portrait in the Blalock Building at Hopkins. Dr. Rollins Hanlon, former president of the American College of Surgeons, called Thomas’ impact on surgery “enormous.” After receiving an honorary doctorate, Thomas was appointed to the medical school faculty. He died in Baltimore in 1985."

Sources:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2004/05_26_04.html

http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/vthomas.htm

http://www.princeton.edu/~mcbrown/display/thomas.html

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/partners/legacy/l_colleagues_thomas.html