1898-1986
From: United States: Maryland, Massachusetts
Fields: Health and Medicine
Taussig, Helen Brooke (1898-1986), American physician, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known for saving the lives of "blue babies." She studied at the medical schools at Harvard, Boston, and Johns Hopkins universities, receiving an M.D. degree in 1927. She became interested in rheumatic diseases and other heart disorders in children and, with Alfred Blalock, developed a surgical technique to alleviate the "blue-baby" condition, or cyanosis, caused by a congenital cardiac malformation that prevents complete circulation of the blood to the lungs. After 1944, when the first Blalock-Taussig operation was developed, many blue babies were saved from invalidism or death.