TAUSSIG, HELEN B. 1898-1986

UNHERALDED DEVELOPER OF PROCEDURE TO CURE "BLUE-BABY SYNDROME"

Preparation

In 1927 Helen B. Taussig graduated from Johns Hopkins Medical School, and in 1930 she assumed the directorship of the school's Pediatrie Cardiac Clinic. She worked in the field of congenital heart disease, particularly the "blue-baby syndrome," in which blood left unoxygenated by a defect in the circulatory system turns the skin of babies blue.

Partnership with Alfred Blalock

In 1940 Taussig began to ponder the possibility of an operation to increase blood flow to the lungs, and she enlisted the aid of Dr. Alfred Blalock, a full professor in surgery at Johns Hopkins, in 1942. Taussig suggested to Blalock that he attempt to increase the blood flow to the lungs by joining two arteries that are naturally close to one another, the subclavian artery and the pulmonary artery.

Success

In November 1944, after more than two years of experiments performed on dogs, Blalock successfully tried the procedure on a one-year-old girl who weighed only about one pound due to the disease. He subsequently refined the operation so that the mortality rate was only 4.7 percent, and the operation became the preferred method of treating "blue babies."

Recognition Denied

In recognition of this joint achievment Blalock won election to the National Academy of Science in June 1945. Meanwhile Taussig, who originated the idea, worked in relative anonymity for the rest of her career, bitter, historians say, at being denied the recognition her male colleague received as a matter of course. She did not win promotion to full professor at Johns Hopkins until 1959.