In the meantime, we are going to take a moment and discuss We're looking back for a moment. We're going to discuss the way Black History Fact and today's way Black History Fact is sponsored by Underground Beach Club From the Streets to the Beach. For the latest in beachware, visit Underground Beeachclub dot com. And today we are reading from nih dot gov. You can check this out for yourself because I had to edit it way down because this woman is fantastic and I can't share everything with you.
Those are times in the States, but I will read. Patricia Ebath, an ophthalmologist and laser scientist, was an innovative research scientist and advocate for blindness prevention, treatment, and cure. Our accomplishments include the invention of a new device and
technique for cataract surgery known as laser faco. I hope I'm saying this writer is very medical, the creation of a new discipline known as community ophthalmology, and appointment as the first woman chair of opthalmology in the United States at Drew UCLA in nineteen eighty three. So an accomplished woman. Patricia Bath's dedication to a life in medicine began in childhood when she first heard about doctor Albert Schweitzer's service
to lepers in the Congo. After excelling in her studies in high school, in university and earning awards for scientific research as early as age sixteen, doctor Bath embarked on a career in medicine. She received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, d c. Interned at Harlem Hospital from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen sixty nine, and completed a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University from
sixty nine to seventy. Following her internship, doctor Bath completed her training at New York University between nineteen seventy and seventy three, where she was the first African American resident in ophthalmology. Bath married and had a daughter, Erica, born in nineteen seventy two. While motherhood became her priority, she also managed to complete a fellowship in corneal transplantation and carapchoprofesis,
replacing the human cornea with an artificial one. As a young intern, shuttling between Harlem Hospital and Columbia University, Bath was quick to observe that at the E Clinic in Harlem, half the patients were blind or visually impaired, and at the I Clinic at Columbia, by contrast, there were very few obviously blind patients. This observation led her to conduct a retrospective epidemiolog epidemiological study sorry which documented that blindness
among blacks was double that among whites. She reached the conclusion that the high prevalence of blindness among blacks was due to the lack of access of ophthalmology ophthalmologic care, so as a result, she proposed a new discipline known as community optthalmology, which is now operative worldwide. Community optalmology combines the aspects of public health, community medicine, and clinical
optomology to offer primary care to underserved populations. The first major eye operation at Harlem Hospital was performed in nineteen seventy As a result of her efforts, all I got to get through this quick. In seventy four, Bath joined the faculty at UCLA at Charles R. Drew University as an assistant professor of surgery and Optalmology. The following year, she became the first woman faculty member in the Department
of optthalmology. Despite university pologies extolling equality and condemning discrimination, Professor Bath experienced numerous instances of sexism and racism throughout her tenure at UCLA. Drew determined that her scientific endeavors must not be obstructed by the glass ceiling in the US.
She took her research or brought to Europe. Her work was accepted on its merits at the Laser Medical Institute of Berlin, West Germany, the rothschild I Institute of Paris, France, and the Lowellborough Institute of Technology in England, and then in nineteen ninety three she retired from UCLA Medical Center
and was appointed to the Honorary Medical Staff. Doctor Bath's great passion, however, continued to be fighting blindness till her death in May of twenty nineteen, and her personal best moment occurred on a humanitarian mission to North Africa, when she restored the site of a woman who had been blind for thirty years.