Medium: Brushed Acrylic on 16x20 Stretched Canvas
Charles Richard Drew was born on June 3, 1904, in Washington, D.C..
Drew attended undergraduate studies at Amherst College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1926. In 1933, he received his medical degree from McGill University, in Montreal, Canada. In 1940, as Dr Drew, he earned a PHD in Medical Research,at Columbia University, in New York.
In the 1930's, while still an intern working on his doctorate in the study of the properties and preservation of blood plasma, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital , Dr Drew discovered that the long term storage of blood plasma could be achieved. Prior to this, whole blood could only be stored for a few days before it broke down and became unusable. By running whole blood through a centrifuge (centrifugal force) the heavier red blood cells, which deteriorated within a week, could be separated from the lighter blood plasma, which held all the life saving antibodies and clotting agents necessary in blood transfusions. The durable blood plasma could then be freeze died and stored for a much longer time than whole blood and reconstituted as needed.
Dr Drew was the foremost authority, of his time, on the processes of retrieving and storing blood products. During World War II he was assigned as Director of the American Red Cross Blood Bank. Under his direction blood banks were developed on a vast scale and thousands of units of blood products were made available to the soldiers and war victims in England.
After persistent pressure from Dr Drew, U.S. military authorities ceased the policy of prohibiting the blood products of African-Americans from being admitted into blood banks. However, he resigned his post as a Red Cross director when the U.S. military ruled that African-American blood products could be used but must be stored separately from the blood products of white donars.
After resigning from the Red Cross, Dr Drew accepted a position as a surgeon at Freedmen's Hospital, in Washington, D.C.. From 1942 to 1950 he also held the position of Professor of Medicine at Howard Univeristy, an African-American institution of higher learning, in Washigton, D.C..
On April 1, 1950, Dr Charles Richard Drew died in a fatal automobile accident, in Burlington, NC, while traveling to a medical convention in Tuskegee, Alabama. Urban legend has it, that Dr Drew bled to death after being refused admittance by a 'white only" North Carolina hospital, being denied the very medical procedure that he pioneered. For the record, this is not true. Truth is, the physicians traveling with Dr Drew did as much as they could to save his life and the hospital did admit him. Unfortunately, due to massive arterial lacerations and irreparable damage to his internal organs there was nothing that could be done to save him.
Written by Carl G. Brown
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