Partners of the Heart

<p><strong>The greatest surgical breakthrough of the 20th century was performed by a man who wasn't allowed to be called a doctor.</strong></p><p>Born in Jim Crow America and barred from medical school <strong>Vivien Thomas</strong> was a gifted carpenter who became the essential surgical genius behind the invention of modern cardiac medicine.</p><p>At the height of institutional segregation Thomas partnered with the ambitious white surgeon <strong>Dr. Alfred Blalock</strong> at Johns Hopkins. Their complex decades-long collaboration culminated in the revolutionary <strong>Blalock-Taussig shunt</strong>-a groundbreaking operation that saved thousands of children afflicted with blue baby syndrome.</p><p>Yet for years Thomas was paid as a janitor forced to enter the hospital through the back door even as he stood on a stool behind Blalock in the operating room guiding the chief surgeon through the delicate procedure he alone had mastered.</p><p>This is the powerful definitive and long-overdue story of a technical master whose quiet genius redefined medical history mentored an entire generation of future surgeons and ultimately forced America's most prestigious institutions to reckon with the color line. Approx.158 pages 28800 word count</p>