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Dr. Helen Taussig

A Pioneer in Medicine

Dr. Helen Taussig Dr. Taussig is my hero because she saved my live—literally. She is responsible for the development of the surgery I had at the age of two. The surgeon told my mother after the procedure that I probably would not have survived to my 4th birthday without the shunt. But she is also my hero because she overcame physical and gender barriers. Here is part of her story: Dr. Taussig was born in 1898 to a Harvard economist and one of the first women to enroll in Radcliff College. Her mother died of tuberculosis and later Helen also contracted the disease, preventing her from attending school until it resolved. She had severe dyslexia, and an ear infection that left her partially deaf further complicating learning. Despite all of this, she did well in school with her father as her tutor. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California at Berkley. She wanted to attend Harvard Medical School but they didn’t allow women into the program so she went to Boston University to study medically related subjects and eventually was accepted to Johns Hopkins Medical School as a full-degree candidate. Dr. Taussig wanted to study internal medicine but the only position available to women was taken so she chose pediatrics and cared for children with heart problems. By this time in her life, she was totally deaf. She had an amplifier for her stethoscope, but diagnosed primarily by feel, lip-reading, and fluoroscopy (a type of x-ray). The most common cause of heart problems at that time was inflammation from rheumatic fever. The children born with heart deformities were considered untreatable. Most died in early childhood. She noticed that some of the babies born with a vessel designed to shunt blood away from the lungs while in the uterus did much better if it didn’t close after birth. She came up with the idea of creating a shunt using one of the arteries that comes off of the aorta close to the heart. She collaborated with Dr. Albert Blalock and his assistant, Vivien Thomas to develop the procedure known today as the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas shunt—the procedure I had two weeks before my third birthday. There is more to Dr. Taussig’s story that can be found on the internet. Wikipedia has one of the better biographies available. PBS also produced a movie titled “Something the Lord Made” which chronicles the development of the B-T-T shunt. It is available on a variety of platforms and well as YouTube. But, for me her story is one about the person who developed a way to save my life, prepared the way for women in medicine, and pioneered the specialty of pediatric medicine that has continued to develop the care that has allowed me to live a long, blessed life.

Dr. Helen Taussig


Dr. Taussig is my hero because she saved my live—literally. She is responsible for the development of the surgery I had at the age of two. The surgeon told my mother after the procedure that I probably would not have survived to my 4th birthday without the shunt. But she is also my hero because she overcame physical and gender barriers. Here is part of her story:

Dr. Taussig was born in 1898 to a Harvard economist and one of the first women to enroll in Radcliff College. Her mother died of tuberculosis and later Helen also contracted the disease, preventing her from attending school until it resolved. She had severe dyslexia, and an ear infection that left her partially deaf further complicating learning. Despite all of this, she did well in school with her father as her tutor. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California at Berkley. She wanted to attend Harvard Medical School but they didn’t allow women into the program so she went to Boston University to study medically related subjects and eventually was accepted to Johns Hopkins Medical School as a full-degree candidate.

Dr. Taussig wanted to study internal medicine but the only position available to women was taken so she chose pediatrics and cared for children with heart problems. By this time in her life, she was totally deaf. She had an amplifier for her stethoscope, but diagnosed primarily by feel, lip-reading, and fluoroscopy (a type of x-ray). The most common cause of heart problems at that time was inflammation from rheumatic fever. The children born with heart deformities were considered untreatable. Most died in early childhood. She noticed that some of the babies born with a vessel designed to shunt blood away from the lungs while in the uterus did much better if it didn’t close after birth. She came up with the idea of creating a shunt using one of the arteries that comes off of the aorta close to the heart. She collaborated with Dr. Albert Blalock and his assistant, Vivien Thomas to develop the procedure known today as the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas shunt—the procedure I had two weeks before my third birthday.

There is more to Dr. Taussig’s story that can be found on the internet. Wikipedia has one of the better biographies available. PBS also produced a movie titled “Something the Lord Made” which chronicles the development of the B-T-T shunt. It is available on a variety of platforms and well as YouTube. But, for me her story is one about the person who developed a way to save my life, prepared the way for women in medicine, and pioneered the specialty of pediatric medicine that has continued to develop the care that has allowed me to live a long, blessed life.

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