Abstract
Triumphant medicine in the late nineteenth and in the first half of the twentieth centuries involved increasing amounts of technology and engineering skills. The present contribution gives an example of such a momentous and irreversible convergence between two specific fields: surgery and mechanical engineering. In less than 50 years (c.1930–1980) several “scientific couples” (usually a visionary surgeon and an above-average-skilled engineer) had made a reality of a long dreamed “impossibility” of modern medicine such as open-heart surgery. This contribution will focus not only on technical details but also on the “human factor” which was the hallmark of the protagonists of this revolution.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
I’ve already briefly outlined this history in a chapter of Borghi 2012, pp. 275–286 (in Italian).
- 2.
From an academic point of view, Lindbergh afterwards refused many offers of honorary degrees, but made an exception in 1930 for a honorary Master of Science from Princeton University (Berg 1998, p. 224).
- 3.
I haven’t found it even in the monograph on the same subject published by Carrel and Lindbergh in 1938 (see References).
References
Absolon KB (1983) Theodor Billroth and cardiac surgery. Editorial. The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery 86:451–452
Bakken EE (1999) One man’s full life. Medtronic, Inc., Minneapolis
Barnard C (1969) Una vita. Una biografia scritta da Christiaan Barnard e Curtis Bill Pepper. Mondadori, Verona
Berg AS (1998) Lindbergh. Putnam’s Sons, New York
Borghi L (2012) Umori. Il fattore umano nella storia delle discipline biomediche. Società Editrice Universo, Roma
Broers H (2006) Inventor for life. The story of W.J. Kolff, Father of artificial organs. B & Vmedia Publishers, Kampen
Carrel A, Lindbergh C (1935) The culture of whole organs. Science 81:621–623
Carrel A, Lindbergh C (1938) The culture of organs. Hoeber, New York
Carrel’s Man (1935) The Time Magazine, Monday, Sept. 16
Cooley DA (1999) C. Walton Lillehei, the “Father of Open Heart Surgery”. Circulation 100:1364–1365
Cooper DKC (2010) Open heart. The radical surgeons who revolutionized medicine. Kaplan, New York
DeVries WC, Jarvik RK, Kolff WJ et al (1984) Clinical use of the total artificial heart. New England Journal of Medicine 310–315:273–278
Gedeon A (2006) Science and technology in medicine. Springer, New York
Goor DA (2007) The genius of C. Walton Lillehei and the true history of open heart surgery. Vantage Press, New York
Lillehei CW, Bakken EE et al. (1960) Transistor pacemaker for treatment of complete atrioventricular dissociation. JAMA 172:2006–10
Lindbergh CA (1927) We—pilot & plane. Putnam’s Sons, London
Malinin TI (1979) Surgery and life. The extraordinary career of Alexis Carrel. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York
Moisse K (2012) Heart Failure Patients Seek ‘Cheney Pump’. ABC World News, March 26. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartFailureTreatment/cheney-heart-pump-high-demand/story?id=16003183#.UWV4c8j-6Kd. Accessed 15 April 2013
Mullins R (2013) Miles Lowell Edwards (1898–1982). The Oregon Encyclopedia. http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/entry/view/edwards_lowell_1898_1982_/. Accessed 15 April 2013
Reiser SJ (1978) Medicine and the reign of technology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Romaine-Davis A (1991) John Gibbon and His Heart-Lung Machine. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Shumacker HB (1999) A dream of the heart. The life of John H. Gibbon, Jr., Father of the heart-lung machine. Fithian Press, Santa Barbara
Starr A (2007) The artificial heart valve. Nature Medicine 13(10):1160–1164
Starr A, Edwards ML (1961) Mitral replacement: clinical experience with a ball-valve prosthesis. Annals of Surgery 154(4):726–740
Tesler UF (2012) Viaggio nel cuore. Storia e storie della cardiochirurgia. UTET, Torino
Wakely R (1980) Artificial heart successful in calf—humans are next. Nashua Telegraph 112(255):12
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Borghi, L. (2015). Heart Matters. The Collaboration Between Surgeons and Engineers in the Rise of Cardiac Surgery. In: Pisano, R. (eds) A Bridge between Conceptual Frameworks. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9645-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9645-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9644-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9645-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)