Something the Lord Made is a wonderful movie about the people that developed the first heart operation. The movie starts shortly before World War 2 during the Great Depression. Vivien Thomas, a black man, finds work with a brilliant young surgeon, Alfred Blalock, cleaning his lab. This is the start of a great partnership as the two men work to first come up with treatments for shock. Later on they pair up with cardiologist Helen Taussig to work on a surgery to help children that have heart defects.
It is amazing seeing the state of medicine during that time. There was a huge taboo about even attempting surgery on the heart, it just was too risky since the heart/lung bypass machine had yet to be invented. Another layer to the story (which is the movie's main focus) is the relationship between the two men. This was a time of great racial tension and segregation was in full force. Thomas got no credit for the work he did in the laboratory (the name of the procedure is still to this day called the Blalock-Taussig shunt) until much later in his life.
I highly recommend this fascinating movie. I got misty eyed more than once. If you would like to learn more about the operation there is a really neat website that explains things in further detail.
Something+the+Lord+Made Netflix
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4 comments:
I also liked this movie. We take a lot of these complex surgeries for granted because they've always been around since we've been alive. It was fascinating to see the process that went into finding out if this was even do-able.
Great review!
*adds to queue*
I really liked it too: caught in on HBO, late one night. It's one of those stories that you think "How come nobody ever told us about this???" It was so interesting!
I LOVE this movie. We own a copy of it. It is incredible. :)
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