Drew, Charles Richard

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Drew, Charles Richard

December 6, 1904
April 1, 1950

The surgeon Charles Richard Drew was born and raised in Washington, D.C., graduating from Dunbar High School in 1922. In 1926 he received a B.A. from Amherst College. Drew was a first-rate basketball player, and upon graduation he was given an award as best athlete of the college. Between 1926 and 1928 he taught biology and chemistry at Morgan College (now Morgan State University) in Baltimore, where he also served as football coach and as director of athletics.

In 1928 Drew began medical studies at McGill University Medical School in Montreal, Canada. He excelled in medical science courses; won the annual prize in neuroanatomy; was elected to Alpha Phi Omega, the medical honorary scholastic fraternity; and received a prize for the top score in a medical exam competition. In 1933 Drew earned an M.D. and a Master of Surgery degree. He spent the next two years as an intern and a resident in medicine at Royal Victoria and Montreal General Hospitals.

As a McGill medical student, Drew was introduced to research on the chemical composition of blood and blood groups by John Beattie, a British medical researcher. A major problem then facing medical science was that quantities of whole, fresh blood large enough to match blood group types between blood donor and blood receiver were not readily available. Drew was bothered by the deaths of seriously ill or injured patients due to blood loss. Learning more about blood and how to preserve it over long periods of time became a research interest that Drew carried with him when he left Montreal to assume a teaching position at Howard University's College of Medicine in 1935.

In 1938 Drew received a research fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation for study at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. He and John Scudder undertook research that led to the finding that it was blood plasma (the liquid portion of the blood, devoid of blood cells), rather than whole blood, that needed to be preserved for transfusions. Drew established an experimental blood bank at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. In 1940 he was awarded a doctorate at Columbia University with a thesis on "Banked Blood."

Returning to Howard University in 1940, Drew devoted himself to training medical students in surgery. His teaching was abruptly interrupted, however, by a call for blood plasma needed by wounded soldiers on the battle-fields of Europe during World War II. The Blood Transfusion Association in New York City asked Drew to help. He was given leave from his instructional duties at Howard University to accept an assignment in the fall of 1940 as medical director of the Blood for Britain Program, which supplied blood for the British Red Cross. Under Drew's guidance, dried plasma was flown across the Atlantic Ocean to England. Once England had established its own banks, a larger blood program for U.S. military forces was developed. The American Red Cross and the Blood Transfusion Association jointly conducted this program, and Drew became its medical director.

In 1941 the military established a system of refusing blood donations from nonwhites to be used by whites. Blood donated by blacks was stored separately and given only to blacks. As director of the Red Cross Blood Bank Program, Drew took a strong stand against the racial separation of banked blood. As a result, he was asked to resign his directorship position, which he did. He then returned to teaching surgery at Howard University, where he became professor and head of the department of surgery, as well as surgeon-in-chief at Freedmen's Hospital.

On March 31, 1950, after working a long day that included performing several operations, Drew agreed to drive with other colleagues to a medical conference in Tuskegee, Alabama. He dozed at the wheel, and the car went off the road near Burlington, North Carolina, and overturned. Though stories abound that his medical emergency was ignored because of his race, he received prompt medical attention. He died from injuries resulting from the accident.

Drew gained much recognition during his lifetime. He was named Diplomate of Surgery by the American Board of Surgery in 1941; was a recipient of the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1944; was granted honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Virginia State College (1945) and Amherst College (1947); and was elected as a Fellow of the International College of Surgery (1946).

See also Howard University; Science