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Samuel Lee Kountz An African American physician from Arkansas who pioneered kidney transplant work in America, Dr. Samuel Lee Kountz died a lamentably early death.However,he packed a great deal of accomplishment into his short career. Born the son of a preacher and farmer in Lexa, Phillips County, in , Kountz was introduced to medicine by his mother, an occasional midwife.After attending segregated schools in Lexa, Kountz took a bachelor degree from Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College in Pine Bluff. He then further prepared for medical school by earning a master’s degree in chemistry at the University of Arkansas,followed in  with a medical degree from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine. Kountz was a surgery resident at San Francisco County Hospital and then studied at the Stanford Medical Center in California and at Hammersmith Hospital in London. While at Stanford, Kountz began a serious study of kidney transplants. After joining the University of California at San Francisco he became chief of the kidney transplant service. While at the university he helped develop a process for preserving kidneys for later transplanting. Most of his research focused on ways to prevent the body from rejecting transplanted kidneys. Kountz is credited with the discovery that prednisolone is effective in minimizing transplant rejection. He also became a strong advocate for transplanting a second kidney at the first sign of rejection, commenting that it was “better to save the patient and sacrifice the graft.” He transplanted more than five hundred kidneys, with a very high success rate. Some say Kountz’s major contribution to medicine was his work to make the public aware of the need for organ donation.He even performed a kidney transplant on the “Today Show” on national television . He had high standards for himself, once commenting: “From a scientific point of view,I do not consider a kidney transplant operation successful until the patient lives another twenty years.”  In  Kountz became professor and chair of the department of surgery at the State University of NewYork Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and surgeon-in-chief at King’s County Hospital. This relocation to a poor inner-city area was an attempt to contribute more to black health care. Referring to his efforts to strengthen the center’s education programs, he said his goal was “to train people who have to be reckoned with.” Kountz was a diligent researcher as well as educator and hospital administrator.He published dozens of articles in leading medical journals ,including the New England Journal of Medicine. In  he became the first black president of the Society of University Surgeons. After a  trip as a visiting professor in South Africa, Kountz developed an illness that defied diagnosis. He suffered brain damage that robbed him of speech and left him bedridden. He died at the age of fifty-one in  and was buried in All Saints Church Cemetery in Great Neck, New York. The Kountz-Kyle Building at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and the Kountz Pavilion at Harlem Hospital in New York City are named in his honor. Howard University in Washington, D.C., named its international transplant symposium series after Kountz. Before his death he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Arkansas in . FOR MORE INFORMATION: Organ, Claude H., Jr., and Margaret M. Kosiba. A Century of Black Surgeons: The U.S.A. Experience. Norman, OK: Transcript Press, . Samuel Lee Kountz  ...

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