Helen Brooke Taussig, MD

Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig

Find A Grave Memorial ID # 10372821

Dr. Helen Brooke Taussig Wikipedia Page

Helen Brooke Taussig (May 24, 1898 - May 20, 1986) was an American cardiologist, working in Baltimore and Boston, who founded the field of pediatric cardiology. Notably, she is credited with developing the concept for a procedure that would extend the lives of children born with Tetrology of Fallot (also known as blue baby syndrome). This concept was applied in practice as a procedure known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt. The procedure was developed by Dr. Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, who were Taussig's colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Helen B. Taussig was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father was Harvard economist Frank W. Taussig, and her mother Edith Thomas Guild was one of the first students at Radcliffe College. When she was eleven years old, Helen's mother died. Helen struggled with severe dyslexia through her early school years, overcoming it only with diligent work and extensive tutoring from her father. She graduated Cambridge School for Girls in 1917, then studied for two years at Radcliffe before earning a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1921. She then studied at both Harvard Medical School and Boston University before pursuing her postgraduate cardiac research at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Taussig became profoundly deaf in the later part of her career, and learned to use lip-reading to listen to her patients, and her fingers in place of a stethoscope to feel the rhythm of their heartbeats.

Medicine

Dr. Taussig did extensive work on anoxemia, or blue baby syndrome, which led to the development of the pioneering infants surgery called the Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt, first performed by Taussig and Dr. Alfred Blalock on an 11-month old baby girl on November 29, 1944. Taussig wrote the book Congenital Malformations of the Heart in 1947, and received the 1954 Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research for her work. In 1959, she was one of the first women to be awarded a full professorship at Johns Hopkins University. During this time she was aided by Dr. Haywood Turner (now deceased) from Columbus, Georgia, who worked with her for two years doing research on children's heart defects.

Taussig formally retired from Johns Hopkins in 1963, but continued to teach, give lectures, and lobby for various causes. In addition, she kept writing scientific papers (of the 100 total that Taussig wrote, 41 were after her retirement from Johns Hopkins). She advocated the use of animals in medical research and legalized abortion. Taussig also learned of the damaging effects of the drug thalidomide on newborns and testified before Congress on this matter. As a result of her efforts, thalidomide was banned in the United States. In 1977, Taussig moved to a retirement community in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Ever active, she continued making periodic trips to the University of Delaware for research work.

Honors

1947: Chevalier (knight) of the Legion d'Honneur
1948: Passano Foundation Award for an outstanding contribution to medical science, shared with Alfred Blalock- the first time this award was shared, and the first time it was awarded to a woman
1953: Honorary medal from the American College of Chest Physicians
1954: Feltrinelli Award
1954: Albert Lasker Award for Outstanding Contributions to Medicine
1957: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1957: Eleanor Roosevelt Achievement Award
1960: Honorary fellow of the American College of Cardiology
1963: Gold Heart Award
1963: Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women
1964: Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by President Lyndon Johnson
1965: The University of Göttingen named its cardiac clinic in honor of Taussig
1965: First woman and first pediatrician to be elected president of the American Heart Association
1970: Blackwell Award from Hobart and William Smith Colleges
1971: Howland Award from the American Pediatric Society
1973: Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 27 years after Blalock was elected for their joint work on the Blalock-Taussig shunt
1973: Elected to the American Philosophical Society
1973: Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
1976: Awarded the Milton S. Eisenhower Medal for Distinguished Service by Johns Hopkins
1982: Elizabeth Blackwell Medal awarded by the American Medical Women's Association
2005: Johns Hopkins School of Medicine named one of its four colleges in her honor, as well as the Helen B. Taussig Congenital Heart Disease Center
2018: The Helen B. Taussig Research Award began to be given out to postdoctoral fellows holding appointments in the Basic Sciences and clinical Departments at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Throughout her career, Taussig earned more than 20 honorary degrees. Taussig was a member of several professional societies during her career. She was a member of the American Pediatric Society, the Society for Pediatric Research, and the American College of Physicians.

Death

She had begun a study of defects in bird hearts when on May 20, 1986, she died in a car accident while driving friends to vote in a local election four days before what would have been her 88th birthday. She was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery outside of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Legacy

In 1964, Dr. Taussig received the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson, and in 1965 she became the first female president of the American Heart Association. Johns Hopkins University named the "Helen B. Taussig Children's Pediatric Cardiac Center" in her honor, and in 2005 the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine named one of its four colleges in her honor.

Film portrayals

In the 2004 HBO movie Something the Lord Made, Dr. Taussig was portrayed by Mary Stuart Masterson.