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Dr. Alexis Carrel: Pioneer Surgeon and Biologist
| Article
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11426 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
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11 / 1986 |
4,245 Words |
| Author
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William E. Small
William E. Small is the executive director of the National
Foundation for Infectious Diseases in Washington, D.C. |
"There is apparently no reason why the leg or the arm of an animal or of a human being could not be transplanted successfully on another animal of the same species or another human being.
"It has been shown, also, for the first time, that transplanted kidneys function ... that an animal which has undergone a double nephrectomy [surgical removal of a kidney] and the graft [reattachment] of one of his own kidneys can recover completely and live in perfect health for eight months, at least."
These words, published seventy-eight years ago in the then-infant Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by Dr. Alexis Carrel, have proven to be remarkably prophetic if we consider the miracles of modern surgery:
· In 1954, the successful transplant of a kidney in a human by Drs. John Merrill, Joseph Murray, Hartwell Harrison, and Warren Guild in Boston;
· The first successful human heart transplant by Dr. Christian Barnard in South Africa in 1962; and
· The first successful reattachment of a human limb by a team led by Dr. Ronald Malt in Boston in 1962.
In 1985, JAMA published 51 landmark articles in medicine to commemorate the journal's own centennial. Among these superb papers was Alexis Carrel's "Results of the Transplantation of Blood Vessels, Organs and Limbs." In that same collection was a companion piece to Carrel's 1908 article on the surgical
... (1998 of 25433 Characters)
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