Doctor Dan Man of Steel: A Fictional Drama of the Doctor Responsible for the First Heart Surgery

By Dr. James A. Mays

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 22, 2003
• ISBN: 9781469107370

Dr. James A. Mays

James A. Mays is a true renaissance man: poet, scholar, popular novelist, songwriter, cardiologist, and civil leader. His individual achievements are such that he was the recipient of the George Washington Medal. Other notable recipients of this prestigious award are Barbara Jordan and the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Mays has written several songs, one of which, Happy Birthday Mama, was recorded by Bill Cosby. He also co-wrote several songs with H.B Barnum. As an author he is responsible for nine novels, including his latest Trapped, which is in preparation to become a movie. An earlier trilogy, Strivers, is being developed as a miniseries. Dr. Mays is widely recognized as the founder of community problem-solving programs such as the Adopt-A-Family endowment. He is currently involved in several campaigns promoting drug and AIDS awareness and giving assistance to the homeless. He has frequently appeared on television, featuring on shows including “The Today Show, The Phil Donahue Show, on radio, such as the Voice of America and has had articles published in LIFE, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and Ebony. Dr. Mays, who was decorated as combat physician in Vietnam, is a lone parent with four sons.

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PROLOGUE

Great events have punctured man’s existence. The discovery of fire by pre-historic man; the great Egyptian civilization and architecture; great Grecian civilization and great Greek philosophers; the Roman empire; the birth and death of Jesus Christ; The dark ages and Renaissance; discovery of Germs, Sulpha and Penicillin; Anesthesia; the rise and fall of Napoleon; Discovery of America; the Civil War; World War’s One and Two; Splitting the Atom; the Salk Vaccine for Polio; Aids, space exploration, the Secrets of DNA, the Prospects of Cloning, etc. None of those events have so dramatically and instantly saved a life and later countless lives than the pressure packed first heart surgery. The tension latent life or death feat by a young black doctor in 1893 was as meaningful as any historic recording. Daniel Hale Williams displayed courage and skill against tradition and the unknown to open a man’s chest and apply his steel scalpel. This opening of James Cornish’s chest provided the door for modern chest and heart surgery. He was truly: Doctor Dan: Man of Steel.

This fictionalized account of a part of the life of this great man is only a penny tossed into a wishing well, because its in no way represents the wealth residing in the pure clear waters of the well’s depth.

By James A Mays MD

CHAPTER I

The store front office building located at 31st and Michigan on Chicago’s south side blended with the mostly black, low income, tenements of year the 1893. Horse drawn carriages with horse droppings littered the boulevard: buzzing flies were interrupted by the few motor driven engines as their tires rolled over the abundant horse waste. The stockyard and confining buildings provided the environment of a refrigerator with a malfunctioning motor: Tainted rottening cabbage and heat providing a cloud of odor like a modern city’s smog layer. However, the warm sticky weather was no deterrent to the traditional crowded streets filled with people attempting to survive. There was a beehive of activity. Merchants displayed their finest new running water bath tubs and showers. Vegetable and fruit stands provided a sweet and refreshing breath of air, only to be overwhelmed by the open fish market. Brisk paced business men with wool suits and high collars in the 101 degree weather intermittently removed their derbies to fan and create a cool current of air over sweat saturated faces. Hustlers offered medical elixirs to cure most any ailment from Hemorrhoids thru Arthritis, Spells and Tumors. The magic portions were effective: that is effectively laced with abundant alcohol. Beggars cries had not changed since the Egyptian empire ruled the world. This mosaic was after one purpose; barter. In this instance cash.

But there was little money. Children turned over trash cans, scurrying about like alley cats searching for food. Eyes weak and empty; legs, small. Their swollen bellies were disproportionate in size, as thin as balloons, appearing ready to bust due to lack of proper protein nutrition. Older people slowly ambled about the sidewalks, many unnoticed and uncared for receiving their support for premature arthritic limbs with homemade canes. They like the children were searching for any hope and relief which sometimes to them was welcomed in death. There was gaiety, even the sound of music and laughter echoed off the brick lined boulevard and onto the peeling cement of the cluttered buildings.

Some of the women wore cheap perfume, loud colored ruffled dresses and thigh garters; hair with curling ironed pressed locks forming circular halos attempted to attract the last dime from empty banks. While others were crowned with head rages and plain cotton dresses, ragged, flat shoes that had endured the hot summer pavement and winter’s rain and snow. Those women’s faces