Template:Did you know nominations/Horace Smithy


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 09:35, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Horace Smithy

 * ... that Horace Smithy devised a surgery to address his own case of valvular heart disease, but he died before he could undergo surgery himself? Source: "the surgeon who pioneered by cutting open a valve in her heart... Ironically, Dr. Smithy himself was afflicted with the same heart ailment but died from that and pneumonia before a similar operation was performed on him." - Chillicothe Gazette / Associated Press, November 8, 1948
 * ALT1:... that when cardiac surgeon Horace Smithy had a patient die on the operating table, he may have lost the chance to undergo heart surgery himself? Source: "Unhappily, the patient died on the operating table, and I'm sure this deterred Dr. Blalock from any further efforts in that direction. It also disappointed Dr. Smithy beyond all belief because, with this man's death, his chance, however remote, to persuade Dr. Blalock to attempt something on him had gone to the grave with the patient." - Heart to Heart by Allen B. Weisse, p. 80.
 * ALT2:... that Horace Smithy devised a surgery for his own case of valvular heart disease, but he died before he could convince a colleague that it was safe to perform? Source: Weisse, p. 80.
 * Reviewed: Republic SD-3 Snooper
 * Comment: If we go with one of the alt hooks, I am willing to move around the refs a bit to get a source right after the hook fact.

Created by EricEnfermero (talk). Self-nominated at 06:30, 11 December 2017 (UTC).


 * Symbol question.svg, new, in time, long enough, sourced, neutral, no apparent copyvios, QPQ done. Might want to clarify in the article that aortic stenosis is a type of valvular heart disease, so ALT0 aligns with the article (which does not explicitly say that Smithy had valvular heart disease). The article also hardly mentions Smithy's awareness that he had this disease; it seems to jump from 'he realized he had a murmur' to 'he wanted surgery performed on himself,' without explaining how or when he diagnosed his own disease, or whether that influenced his research (as the hook implies). --Usernameunique (talk) 10:47, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I tweaked the wording a little bit related to the heart valve problem. In thinking about my efforts to write an article with a minimum of jargon, I think it's best to use "heart valve problems" rather than "valvular heart disease". Along that line, I'd propose
 * ALT3: "... that Horace Smithy devised a surgery for heart valve problems, but he died before he could undergo the surgery himself?"
 * I am not sure how to fix the issue of the gap between Smithy hearing his own murmur and getting a diagnosis. I don't intend to claim that he diagnosed himself. Even the Crawford reference (the most exhaustive treatment of Smithy's life I can find) doesn't go into detail about the period between hearing the murmur and getting a diagnosis. There's one source that has some information about Smithy's developing symptoms and his realization that his time was limited, but that source has a couple of assertions that are wildly inconsistent with other sources, so I hesitate to use it. By removing "to address his own...", hopefully that will eliminate any unsupported inference that he set out early in his career to fix his own problem. I think that ALT1 also avoids these issues. Let me know if I need to tweak anything else. EricEnfermero (Talk) 11:59, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Side note that's not directly related to this DYK nomination: he probably did diagnose himself just based on his murmur and the fact he'd had rheumatic fever. I don't know if there were any formal tests available for valvular disease at the time, but with a specific type of murmur and a history of rheumatic fever, even without other symptoms, you could probably be 95% sure it was aortic stenosis. So that's probably why it's not mentioned in detail in the sources. 97198 (talk) 13:57, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Symbol confirmed.svg Thanks for the edits. Approving ALT1 and ALT3. --Usernameunique (talk) 20:54, 13 December 2017 (UTC)