Meet the American who helped save millions of newborn babies, Dr. Virginia Apgar, physician and musician
Virginia Apgar kept score for America's babies and coveted scores on the violin as well.
She was a doctor, musician, instrument maker — and an overall pioneering female physician who overcame the prejudices of her era to forge a profound legacy for humanity.
Dr. Apgar is the namesake of a simple but powerful method of diagnosing the health of newborns one minute out of the womb.
The Apgar score, known well to doctors and anxious parents, is credited with helping to save the lives of millions of babies in the United States and around the world.
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"She was a dynamic force and a leading woman in medicine who cut through problems like a hot knife through butter," Dr. John Truman, professor emeritus of pediatrics at Columbia University, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
"But she was liked by everyone, she had a great sense of humor and she loved music. Dr. Apgar was a formidable person."
Apgar attended Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City during the Great Depression, graduating fourth in a class of 90.
The top-tier student planned to become a surgeon.
She was told by surgery chair Dr. Alan Whipple that women were likely to fail in the profession.
She instead pursued the burgeoning field of anesthesiology, with a focus on obstetrics.
Dr. Apgar gained revenge on all those who doubted women in medicine through incredible success.
The Apgar score quickly became standard medical practice around the world. Infant mortality rates have improved dramatically in the years since, and Apgar’s method is one of the major reasons why.
"It’s outrageous today to think that women were told they couldn’t do surgery," said Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical professor of medicine and practicing internist at NYU Langone Medical Center.
"But she took the hand she was dealt and she soared to incredible heights," he said. "She became one of the first and most important anesthesiologists in the country."
Virginia Apgar was born in Westfield, New Jersey, on June 7, 1909, the youngest of Charles E. and Helen May Apgar’s three children.
Her father was an insurance executive who, like his daughter, enjoyed significant interests outside work.
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Tinkering with radio earned Charles Apgar national notoriety as the "wireless wizard" and hero of the World War I homefront.
He uncovered a German spy ring by recording coded radio messages emanating from a New Jersey business on homemade equipment. His variable condenser is now kept by the Henry Ford Museum of Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan.
The family "never sat down," Dr. Apgar later said.
Music was high among their interests.
"Virginia learned to play the violin as a child, and continued throughout her life," the National Library of Science writes of the celebrated doctor.
She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1929 and soon began knocking down doors for woman in medicine, in an era when leading authorities felt females couldn't perform surgery.
Apgar entered Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons on the eve of the Great Depression, one of only nine women in the class of 90.
She blossomed professionally. Apgar became director of the new Division of Anesthesia at Presbyterian Hospital in 1938, the first woman to head a division at the hospital.
She became full professor of anesthesiology back at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1949, the first woman there to hold the title.
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"She was especially interested in the effects of maternal anesthesia on the newborn, and in lowering the neonatal mortality rates," the National Library of Medicine reports.
The scientist still found time to pursue her passion for the arts.
In addition to playing violin, Apgar was proud of her skills as a luthier, a stringed instrument maker.
Apgar once discovered that a telephone book box at her hospital was made of a rare Alaskan hardwood, according to a tale told by Dr. Truman.
"She thought, ‘Oh my God, this would make a fabulous viola,’" he said. She measured the box and had a friend make a cheap wood copy.
"They crept through the hospital at 2 a.m., pulled out the Alaskan hardwood and replaced it with the replica."
Other sources say it was maplewood.
Regardless, the clandestine viola joined her collection of homemade instruments, with two violins and cello.
"That’s the making of a string quartet," said Truman. "And that’s the essence of music."
The first minutes of human life are fraught with deadly peril, as Dr. Apgar was intimately aware.
She attended 17,000 births by the end of the 1950s. About 500 of those babies would have died in childbirth, based on government data from the era.
"Understand, birth is going from a place of fluid and nutrients, the comfort of feeding off the placenta, to a place where you have to breathe air and sustain yourself," said Dr. Siegel.
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"It is a huge, traumatic shock to a newborn. The transition causes tremendous stress."
Once outside, newborns face the immediate prospects of respiratory failure, cardiac failure and neurological issues.
Babies have died at an alarming rate throughout human history. Infant death remained a common reality in the first half of the 20th century, despite dramatic advancements in medicine.
The infant mortality rate in 1950 was 31.9 deaths per 1,000 live births (3.2%), according to both the U.S. government and United Nations data.
"By 1952, Apgar had developed a scoring system to evaluate the health status of newborns, based on their heart rate, respiration, movement, irritability and color one minute after birth," writes the National Library of Medicine.
Now done five minutes after birth as well, the Apgar score helps ensure that babies in crisis are given immediate care.
The most troubled babies are taken from the delivery room to the neonatal intensive care unit as quickly as possible, said Siegel.
Apgar’s methodology quickly spread across the United States and around the world.
"The Apgar idea is universal, a way to determine immediately if babies are going to have problems or not," said Truman.
The Apgar score diagnoses babies on a scale of 1 to 10.
If a baby's Apgar score is 2 to 6, "you just better keep your wits about you because something is likely to go wrong," said Truman. "If it's down at 0 or 1, you instantly call all hands on deck."
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Dr. Siegel noted, "There's no question Apgar led to a pathway of accelerated care at the time of birth. The Apgar score is used everywhere and it's still used today."
Virginia Apgar died on Aug. 7, 1974, in New York City. She was 65 years old.
She was survived by a brother, Lawrence C. Apgar, and is interred in Fairview Cemetery in her hometown of Westfield, New Jersey.
Her work had a far-reaching impact on neonatal care worldwide.
The Apgar score, "along with her many other innovations," writes Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, "catalyzed the establishment of the subspecialties of perinatology and neonatology, the development of neonatal intensive care units, and the entire field of neonatal research."
Apgar became an executive for the National Foundation March of Dimes in 1959, focusing on congenital defects.
She worked there until her death.
She wrote the book "Is My Baby All Right?" with Joan Beck in 1972, addressing the concerns of parents given her years of research and delivery-room experience.
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Dr. Apgar was celebrated by the nation with a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 1994. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995.
Columbia's medical school still owns her string quartet instruments. Playing them is a tradition and an honor for its musically inclined physicians of the future.
She is buried at Fairview Cemetery in her hometown of Westfield, New Jersey.
Dr. Apgar's contribution to the welfare of newborns around the world is a legacy of almost unfathomable impact.
More than three of every 100 newborns in the United States died in 1950; only 1 of every 200 babies die at birth today.
"The New York World Telegram and Sun once wrote, ‘Her name is a lifeline for newborns,'" the College of Physicians and Surgeons says in a tribute to one of its greatest alumna.
"Surgeon General Julius Richmond once said," the college adds, "that Dr. Apgar had ‘done more to improve the health of mothers, babies and unborn infants than anyone else in the 20th century.’"
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