In 1891, the first operation to suture the pericardium (the fluid sac surrounding the heart muscle) took place at the City Hospital in St. Louis. Henry C. Dalton, professor of abdominal and clinical surgery at the Marion Sims College of Medicine repaired a 2" gssh in the pericardium of James Cornish a 22-yr-old man, caused by a stab wound in a fight. It was a daring operation since it involved opening the thoracic cavity at a time when contemporary medical opinion disapproved of surgical treatment of heart wounds. Dalton later recorded his procedure in Annals of Surgery (Feb 1895). In 1893, Daniel Hale Williams, a black American surgeon, performed a similar operation and published his report in Medical Record.« more