"They say you haven't lived unless you have a lot to regret. I regret ... I have some regrets. But I think we should remember not what we lost but what we've done." Alfred Blalock
The true life story of the first heart surgery in history - Something The Lord Made directed by Joseph Sargent in 2005 based on the National Magazine Award-winning Washingtonian magazine article "Like Something the Lord Made" by Katie McCabe.
The film tells the moving story of the thirty-four years partnership that begins in Depression Era Nashville in 1930 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee between one of the nation's pioneering cardiac surgeons, Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman) and an African-American carpenter, Vivien Thomas (Mos Def) as his lab assistant.
Thomas, without a college degree, is a gifted mechanic and tool-maker with hands splendidly adept at surgery. In 1941, Blalock requests Thomas come along with him when he is offered as Chief of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Thomas arrived in Baltimore with his family in June of that year, confronting a severe housing shortage and a level of racism worse than they had endured in Nashville. Hopkins, like the rest of Baltimore is rigidly segregated where the only black employees are janitors in the hospital and where Thomas must enter by the back door.
Blalock and Thomas formed a very close relationship and together, they developed a shunt technique to bypass coarctation of the aorta. While they were working on this, the cardiologist Helen Taussig (Mary Stuart Masterson) presents Blalock with the problem of the blue baby syndrome - a congenital heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot which results in inadequate oxygenation of the blood.
The film dramatizes their race to save a dying blue baby against the background of a Jim Crow (racial segregation) in America, illuminating the nuanced and complex relationship the two sustain. Thomas earns Blalock's unalloyed respect, with Blalock praising the results of Thomas' surgical skill as being "like something the Lord made" and insists that Thomas coach him through the first blue baby surgery over the protests of Hopkins administrators.
Yet outside the lab, they are separated by the prevailing racism of the time. Thomas attends Blalock's parties as a bartender, moonlighting for extra income and when Blalock is honored for the Blue Baby work at the segregated Belvedere Hotel, Thomas is not among the invited guests. Instead, he watches from behind a potted palm at the rear of the ballroom.
After Blalock's death, Thomas continued his work at Johns Hopkins Hospital training surgeons. In 1976, in a formal ceremony, Hopkins recognized Thomas' work and awarded him an honorary doctorate. A portrait of Thomas was placed on the walls of Johns Hopkins next to Blalock's portrait in the lobby of the Alfred Blalock Clinical Sciences Building.
Movie Trailer:
The true life story of the first heart surgery in history - Something The Lord Made directed by Joseph Sargent in 2005 based on the National Magazine Award-winning Washingtonian magazine article "Like Something the Lord Made" by Katie McCabe.
The film tells the moving story of the thirty-four years partnership that begins in Depression Era Nashville in 1930 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee between one of the nation's pioneering cardiac surgeons, Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman) and an African-American carpenter, Vivien Thomas (Mos Def) as his lab assistant.
Thomas, without a college degree, is a gifted mechanic and tool-maker with hands splendidly adept at surgery. In 1941, Blalock requests Thomas come along with him when he is offered as Chief of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Thomas arrived in Baltimore with his family in June of that year, confronting a severe housing shortage and a level of racism worse than they had endured in Nashville. Hopkins, like the rest of Baltimore is rigidly segregated where the only black employees are janitors in the hospital and where Thomas must enter by the back door.
 |
| HELEN BROOKE TAUSSIG (May 24, 1898 - May 20, 1986) |
The film dramatizes their race to save a dying blue baby against the background of a Jim Crow (racial segregation) in America, illuminating the nuanced and complex relationship the two sustain. Thomas earns Blalock's unalloyed respect, with Blalock praising the results of Thomas' surgical skill as being "like something the Lord made" and insists that Thomas coach him through the first blue baby surgery over the protests of Hopkins administrators.
Yet outside the lab, they are separated by the prevailing racism of the time. Thomas attends Blalock's parties as a bartender, moonlighting for extra income and when Blalock is honored for the Blue Baby work at the segregated Belvedere Hotel, Thomas is not among the invited guests. Instead, he watches from behind a potted palm at the rear of the ballroom.
 |
| ALFRED BLALOCK (Apr 5, 1899 - Sep 15, 1964) & VIVIEN THEODORE THOMAS (Aug 29, 1910 - Nov 26, 1985) |
The way you get meaning into your life
is to devote yourself to love others,
devote yourself to your community around you,
and devote yourself to creating something
that gives you purpose and meaning.
is to devote yourself to love others,
devote yourself to your community around you,
and devote yourself to creating something
that gives you purpose and meaning.
Movie Trailer:
No comments:
Post a Comment