Language, Literacy and Storytelling: Day 12 - Samuel L. Kountz Jr.

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

In 2001, my father-in-law's kidney's began to fail. My sister-in-law gave him one of hers. If not for Samuel Kountz, it might never have happened.

Samuel L. Kountz Jr.

1930 - 1981

Who Was He?

Samuel was born in Lexa, Arkansas. Lexa was an incredibly poverty-stricken area. His father was a Baptist minister, and his mother was a midwife. There was no doctor in the area, so his mother did her best to attend to the injuries people suffered, and his father played the role of nurse.

At the age of eight, Samuel decided that he wanted to be a doctor to relieve people's pain and suffering.

As with many African Americans in the early 1900s, most of the top medical schools in the country were closed to him, and many of the primary and secondary schools he could attend were both segregated and offered substandard education.

After graduation from high school, Kountz discovered his course work had been remedial, and he had to take extra classes to bring his level up high enough to get into college.

University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff

He was eventually enrolled in The Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College of Arkansas which is now called the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

During his senior year at university, he met Senator J. William Fulbright. When Fulbright found out that Kountz was planning to apply to black medical schools after graduation, he encouraged him to apply to the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.

Kountz followed this advice only to find out that the University of Arkansas Medical School did not accept black people into their program.

He did get a degree in chemistry at the University's Fayetteville branch.

In 1956, Kountz earned his masters in chemistry, and his work was so excellent, the University of Arkansas changed its mind about letting him into the medical school, and in 1958 he became the first African American to graduate from the University of Arkansas Medical School.

After graduating, Kountz got a very prestigious internship at the San Francisco General Hospital.

In 1959, he began his surgical training at Stanford University School of Medicine. It was here he decided to specialize in transplant surgery.

What Did He Do?

In 1961 while still in residence, Samuel Kountz made medical history when he conducted the first ever kidney transplant from a non-twin donor. It was a mother-daughter donor set.

He figured out how to keep the body from rejecting a donated organ.

Kountz did groundbreaking work on human tissues to aid in finding good candidate matches for donors.

He developed the prototype for the Belzer Perfusion Kidney Machine that can keep kidneys alive for up to 50 hours.

He spent his life encouraging people to donate a kidney to help save the lives of others.

in 1976, he got the Today Show to televise a kidney transplant surgery so people would see how important donating kidneys is. Everyone has two, and you can get along just fine with one. It was a successful campaign. 20,000 viewers signed up to offer a kidney to someone who needed it.

Over the course of his life, Kountz performed 500 kidney transplants, the most of any doctor at the time.

He traveled the world lecturing, teaching, and saving people's lives.

Kountz developed the largest kidney transplant and research program in the country at the University of California in San Francisco.

In 1977, he was touring through South Africa and contracted a debilitating illness. He died in 1981.

His Legacy?

What was once a dangerous, risky, scary and usually unsuccessful surgery (the transplantation of kidneys) is now practiced successfully in over 80 countries.

Transplanting kidneys is not the last resort, it is the first line of treatment for someone whose kidneys are failing.

American surgeons alone perform about 20,000 kidney transplants a year.

Kountz's work has saved countless lives, including my father-in-law's.

Want to help? Contact the National Kidney Foundation