By Alabama NewsCenter Staff
November 29, 1902: On this day “The New York Medical Record” published an account of pioneering surgeon Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performing the first successful surgery on a wounded heart in the Western Hemisphere when he sutured a knife wound in a 13-year-old boy’s heart. Widely regarded as an authority on heart wounds, Hill had not actually operated on a living heart. The boy survived the 45-minute surgery and within a few weeks had recovered from his wounds. Hill, a Montgomery native, was the father of Alabama politician and U.S. Sen. Lister Hill, whom he named for Joseph Lister, the pioneer of sterile surgery.
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