"I will give it my best shot. He will surely die without a transplant."
-- Dr Joshua Mezrich
PIONEERING heart transplant surgeon Christiaan Bernard was quite succint in his summation of his incredible world first:
' It's just a punp".
But it was a human pump, a heart taken from the chest of 24-year old Denise Darval and implanted into the chest of a 67-year-old desperately ill dentist.
And the world was in wonder.
Medical science has been given a staggering advance that weekend in 1966 when Barnard, a young Cape Town cardiologist and surgeon, transplanted the heart of a road accident victim into the chest of another human being.
The heart of Denise Darval resumed its beating in the body of Dr Philip Blaiberg.
The Cape town dentist lived on for 18 days -- but the significance of that wonderous medical procedure endures to this day.
In his book How Death Becomes Life Dr Joshua Mezrich gives a searching, insight into this theatre of the pure, the theatre of the cure.
It is a tour de force, a drama which abounds with medical expertise and brilliance, of research and endeavour.
It was painstaking , heart breaking work and dangerous - the pioneers in America risked jail.
But above all it had as its cast, surgeons with tenacity who were resolute in their pursuit .
They were the risk- taking medical adventurers who offered hope and life to the desperately ill, crossing the boundary of science fiction into that of medical reality.
Against all odds they never gave up.
They had drive, focus, confidence and the courage to succeed.
For where once transplants were merely palliative they now offered remarkable longevity
Transplantation had long preceded the Barnard breakthrough. The groundwork had been done years before
The first heart transplant in any animal is credited to Vladimer Demikhov. Working in Moscow in 1946, Demikhov switched the hearts between two dogs. The dogs survived the surgery.
Dr Mezrich takes us through the earliest years of organ swapping and into the drama of a harvesting flight, defying the turbulence of a stormy sky to collect the donated organ
Then on to the drama of the operating theatre where the lifesaving procedures are performed
Dr Mezrich dramatises the medical procedure, making the operating theatre indeed aptly named
For the process of extending life by the procurement and transplantation of vital organs is filled with the mystique of the art of performance
The persona dramatica, with the surgeons as the leading role the patients are the given script and the bit players are there in extremis.
Chris Barnard's work is but a short chapter in Dr Mezrich's work but that operation in a Cape Town hospital one Saturday evening turned the South African into a superstar and transplantion of the human heart into global headlines.
And as a South African I have a personal bond to the transplant mystique.
Many years later I was to stand in Dr Barnard's office at the University of Cape Town where he held a professorship.
I had been taken there by a fellow professor, Dr Tim Noakes, who was to make his own mark - as a leader in sports medicine and nutrition. Noakes and I were roadrunning friends, but this is an aside. As is the fact that my wife was to give Catholic instruction to Barnard's two sons.
In the office of the famous surgeon, encased in glass and covered in preservative fluid, was the diseased heart taken from one of his patients, who is unnamed
I was in the presence of medical history.
Now almost 50 years , in the pages of Dr Mezrich's engrossing book , I am returned into the awesome world of the transplant surgeon.
Dr Mezrich is adamant that the surgeons were not centre stage.
The patients were and remain the true heros.
-- Dr Joshua Mezrich
PIONEERING heart transplant surgeon Christiaan Bernard was quite succint in his summation of his incredible world first:
' It's just a punp".
But it was a human pump, a heart taken from the chest of 24-year old Denise Darval and implanted into the chest of a 67-year-old desperately ill dentist.
And the world was in wonder.
Medical science has been given a staggering advance that weekend in 1966 when Barnard, a young Cape Town cardiologist and surgeon, transplanted the heart of a road accident victim into the chest of another human being.
The heart of Denise Darval resumed its beating in the body of Dr Philip Blaiberg.
The Cape town dentist lived on for 18 days -- but the significance of that wonderous medical procedure endures to this day.
In his book How Death Becomes Life Dr Joshua Mezrich gives a searching, insight into this theatre of the pure, the theatre of the cure.
It is a tour de force, a drama which abounds with medical expertise and brilliance, of research and endeavour.
It was painstaking , heart breaking work and dangerous - the pioneers in America risked jail.
But above all it had as its cast, surgeons with tenacity who were resolute in their pursuit .
They were the risk- taking medical adventurers who offered hope and life to the desperately ill, crossing the boundary of science fiction into that of medical reality.
Against all odds they never gave up.
They had drive, focus, confidence and the courage to succeed.
For where once transplants were merely palliative they now offered remarkable longevity
Transplantation had long preceded the Barnard breakthrough. The groundwork had been done years before
The first heart transplant in any animal is credited to Vladimer Demikhov. Working in Moscow in 1946, Demikhov switched the hearts between two dogs. The dogs survived the surgery.
Dr Mezrich takes us through the earliest years of organ swapping and into the drama of a harvesting flight, defying the turbulence of a stormy sky to collect the donated organ
Then on to the drama of the operating theatre where the lifesaving procedures are performed
Dr Mezrich dramatises the medical procedure, making the operating theatre indeed aptly named
For the process of extending life by the procurement and transplantation of vital organs is filled with the mystique of the art of performance
The persona dramatica, with the surgeons as the leading role the patients are the given script and the bit players are there in extremis.
Chris Barnard's work is but a short chapter in Dr Mezrich's work but that operation in a Cape Town hospital one Saturday evening turned the South African into a superstar and transplantion of the human heart into global headlines.
And as a South African I have a personal bond to the transplant mystique.
Many years later I was to stand in Dr Barnard's office at the University of Cape Town where he held a professorship.
I had been taken there by a fellow professor, Dr Tim Noakes, who was to make his own mark - as a leader in sports medicine and nutrition. Noakes and I were roadrunning friends, but this is an aside. As is the fact that my wife was to give Catholic instruction to Barnard's two sons.
In the office of the famous surgeon, encased in glass and covered in preservative fluid, was the diseased heart taken from one of his patients, who is unnamed
I was in the presence of medical history.
Now almost 50 years , in the pages of Dr Mezrich's engrossing book , I am returned into the awesome world of the transplant surgeon.
Dr Mezrich is adamant that the surgeons were not centre stage.
The patients were and remain the true heros.