Vivien was born in New Iberia, Louisiana on August 29, 1910. He was the grandson of a slave. He attended high school and had wanted to attend college, but the Great Depression set in and his plans were derailed. He briefly worked as a carpenter for Fisk University, but was laid off amidst the stock market crashes. In February 1930, he secured a position as surgical research technician with Dr. Alfred Blalock of Vanderbilt University. Thomas was almost immediately assisting Blalock with experiments on animals and within a short period was doing surgeries on his own.
Though he was doing these surgeries, he was classified and paid as a janitor, and by the mid 1930s he was doing the same work as a postdoctoral researcher.
Thomas and Blalock made incredible advancements in the field of traumatic shock, and particularly Crush syndrome ( is a medical condition characterized by major shock and renal failure after a crushing injury to skeletal muscle). During World War II, this research is believed to have saved the lives of thousands of soldiers.
When Blalock was offered the position of Chief of Surgery at John Hopkins University, he requested that Thomas go with him, and unfortunately faced a lot of racism and segregation (not that he didn’t before).
They were approached by a pediatric surgeon named Helen Taussig, who was looking for help regarding the solution to “Blue Baby Syndrome”. Thomas sought to create the symptoms in dogs first, and correct the syndrome.
On November 29, 1944 the first corrective surgery was done on a human, an eighteen month old Eileen Saxon who could only walk a few brief steps before running out of breath. There were not proper surgical instruments for cardiac surgery yet, so Thomas modified them to suit the procedure. During the procedure, Blalock was the surgeon (even though he only performed it ONCE as Thomas’ assistant), but requested that Thomas stand on a stool overlooking and issuing instructions. The infants life was prolonged for several months, though ultimately died. However, the prolonging proved that the surgery worked. The next operation was more successful on a 11 year old, and was able to leave the hospital a few weeks later. There were another successful surgery, and these three cases were mentioned in May 1945 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Blalock and Taussig were given credit, whereas Thomas was not mentioned. Thomas trained and mentored many young surgeons, and was credited for teaching them the best techniques of the day.
Unfortunately for Thomas, he was disgustingly underpaid. He was sometimes forced to bar tend on the side at Blalock’s parties. Though in 1946, he became the highest paid African-American and highest paid technician at John Hopkins.
Thomas’ only lost hope at returning to school when he was refused life experience and told to fulfill freshman requirements by Morgan State University.
In 1976, he was finally granted an Honourary Doctorate of Law, not Medicine. Though it did allow him to be called Doctor. He was appointed the Instructor of Surgery. He retired in 1979, and wrote an autobiography Partners of the Heart. He died on November 26, 1985 a few days after the book was published.
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