There are many medical reasons that can cause black stools that are tarry with a foul smell, but sometimes dark stools are caused by eating certain foods or taking iron supplements. However, black stools can also be a result of bleeding, and the darker color indicates that the blood could be coming from a point in the upper gastrointestinal tract.
Gertrude Levandowski survived a 96-hour procedure at a Chicago hospital to remove a giant ovarian cyst; the longest surgery. The second longest surgery ever was 40 hours long and that was to remove 6 limbs from a 8 limed baby in India. But the most common longest surgery is spinal cord surgery it is a 14 hour surgery.
07/09/2012 05:24 pm ET. 180. In 1893, exactly 119 years ago Monday, Chicago surgeon Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open-heart surgery, in what would become both a significant medical advancement, and a huge step in the fight for equality, since Williams was one of the nation's few black cardiologists at the time.