The picture above shows Dr Samuel Lee Kountz, whose achievements in medicine can fully show you the contributions of the Black man to the advancement of humanity.
The eminent surgeon was born to Samuel Kountz, Sr. and Emma Montague in Lexa, Arkansas, United States Of America. When he accompanied an injured friend to a local hospital for emergency treatment, he was so moved by the doctors’ ability to relieve his friend’s suffering, which instigated Samuel Lee Kountz’s desire to become a physician.
As they lived in a town without a doctor, Kountz’s father would often assume the role of a nurse and his mother, a midwife. And despite having access to fewer educational resources, the young and determined Kountz worked his way through high school to attend university. He completed his early education in his town, Lexa, and spent three years at a Baptist boarding school for young people considering the ministry. Later, he graduated from Morris Booker College High School in Dermott, Arkansas (Chicot County).
He later graduated with a B.S. in 1952 at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College, which is currently the University of Arkansas located at Pine Bluff, the tenth-largest city in Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County. Kountz received an M.S. in biochemistry from the University of Arkansas and then made history when he became the first African-American admitted into the medical school and graduated in 1958.
When he completed his PhD in medical science, he left for San Francisco, where he enrolled on a medical surgery course. There he met Dr Cohn, one of the pioneers of organ transplants. In 1964, they successfully performed an organ transplant, which was said to be among the first in the world.
Dr Samuel Kountz continued his research in organ transplants which led him to a discovery that forever changed the world and put his name on the list of legendary surgeons. He discovered a steroid called methylprednisolone, effectively reducing the rejection of transplanted organs. His discovery was a massive achievement in modern medicine because organ transplant patients recorded high death rates – less than 5% of them lived.
Kountz worked with Folker Belzer to build the Belzer kidney perfusion machine, which kept kidneys alive for 50 hours after being removed from the donor’s body.
Kountz also established the Center for Human Values at UCSF to discuss ethical issues regarding most transplants. In 1972 the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn recruited Kountz to work as the professor and chair of the surgery department. “Kountz’s pioneering work has made kidney transplants fairly common today,” blackpast.org wrote in 2011. The renowned surgeon won numerous awards and honours like Diplomat and American Board of Surgeons in 1966 and travelled the world to share his expertise. Sadly, he contracted an unknown disease in South Africa in 1977, which caused him extreme brain damage. Samuel Kountz died at age 51 on December 23, 1981, in Kings Point, New York, USA.
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