Bessie Blount born - November 24, 1914

On this day in 1914, physical therapist and inventor Bessie Blount was born. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm Eves
and you're listening to This Day in History Class, a
podcast that really takes to heart the phrase you learn
something new every day. Today is November. The day was

(00:25):
November nineteen fourteen. Bessie Blunt was born in Hickory, Virginia.
Blunt was a physical therapist and inventor who created tools
and devices to help people with physical disabilities. Bessie's parents
were George Woodard and Mary Elizabeth Griffin. She went to
Digg's Chapel Elementary School, a school that was built after

(00:47):
the Civil War for the children of formerly enslaved people
and Native Americans. She said that at the school, black
kids learned how to read by reading verses out of
the Bible. She was left handed, but one of her
teachers would beat her on her knuckles for writing with
her left hand. She figured that quote, if it was
wrong to right with my left hand, then it was

(01:09):
wrong to right with my right hand. So she taught
herself to write with her teeth and feet. Her family
moved to New Jersey, where Bessie studied nursing at Kenny
Memorial Hospital and attendant Panzer College of Physical Education. After
she graduated from Panzer, she studied physical therapy at Union
Junior College. Once she became a practicing physical therapist, she

(01:33):
worked at veterans hospitals where she taught soldiers who lost
limbs or didn't have use of their limbs new ways
to perform tasks. She taught them how to write with
their teeth and feet, and she designed inventions that would
help the veterans with task that could not be compensated
for with physical therapy. One of those inventions was a
device that helped people who were unable to use their

(01:56):
limbs to reach their mouth eat on their own. She
spent ten months developing her first design of this device,
and after about four years of further development, she created
a working model made of stainless steel. One bite of
food at a time was delivered through a tube. A
patient would then bite down on the tube, which activated
a motor and dispensed that bite of food through the mouthpiece.

(02:19):
The device shut down between bites so the patient would
have time to chew the food. The chief medical director
of the Veterans Administration told her the feeding device was
impractical and that hand feeding was preferred. Medical supply companies
were not buying into her device, so she donated the
patent rights to the French government in nineteen fifty one.

(02:41):
The French government was interested in using the device in
military hospitals, but it also designed another feeding device, which
was made up of a tube attached to a dish
that was connected to a brace that a person wore
around their neck. In nineteen fifty three, she appeared on
a television show about inventions called Big Idea. She went

(03:02):
on to work as a caretaker for the mother in
law of Theodore Edison, son of inventor Thomas Edison, and
she designed more inventions, like a kidney shaped vomit basin
made out of paper machee. The invention wasn't picked up
in the US, but the Belgian government took interest in it,
and the basins are still used in Belgian hospitals today.

(03:22):
In nineteen sixty nine, Blunt switched career paths, turning to
forensic science. She became a handwriting analyst and published a
paper on medical graphology, or the study of handwriting. She
detected for documents for the Violent Police Department in New
Jersey and for police departments in Virginia. She applied to
work in the FBI and was turned down, but in

(03:44):
nineteen seventy seven she took an advanced studies course in
the document division at Scotland Yard. She's believed to be
the first black American woman to train and work at
Scotland Yard. In her later years, Blunt continued to do
freelance forensic work, and she authenticated documents for museums. She
also worked as a consultant in law enforcement investigations. Blunt

(04:08):
died in New Jersey in December of two nine. I'm
each STEPF. Coote and hopefully you know a little more
about history today than you did it yesterday. Keep up
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at this Day at I heart media dot com. Thanks

(04:33):
for listening. We'll see you again tomorrow with another episode.
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(04:55):
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