May 20: Helen B. Taussig and Pediatric Cardiology

Helen Brooke Taussig, who led the development of pediatric cardiology as a medical specialty, died in an auto accident at the age of 88 on this date in 1986. Despite her lifelong dyslexia, Taussig graduated as a physician from the Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1927 and maintained an association with the school for six decades. She pioneered in the use of X-rays and fluoroscopy to identify heart defects in newborns, and worked with surgeon Alfred Blalock to develop, in 1944, a surgical intervention for “blue baby syndrome” that saved the lives of thousands of newborns. Her 1947 book, Congenital Malformations of the Heart, was a comprehensive work about heart defects, diagnostic tools, and medical interventions. (She herself was unable to use a stethoscope, however, as she was hard of hearing as a result of childhood whooping cough.) Taussig was also key in the early 1960s in identifying the terrible birth defects caused by the sedative thalidamide and getting the drug removed from the market.

“Neither her scientific and clinical acumen, nor her enormously demanding schedule, ever prevented Taussig from being a warm, compassionate physician to her many patients and their families. She followed her patients for years, even after her own retirement. She never found it necessary to distance herself from the critically-ill children that she treated, or from their parents. Her warmth and ability to see and treat people as individuals has been recalled by many who knew her.” —Gale Encyclopedia of Biography