The Invention of the Heart-Lung Machine Launches the Era of Open-Heart Surgery
Overview
One of the most important advances in cardiac medicine in the twentieth century was the invention of the heart-lung machine. Scientists knew that delicate heart surgery was impossible without a console to take over the function of the human heart and lungs, but few deemed it possible. After decades of trial and error, John "Jack" H. Gibbon successfully tested the first human heart-lung machine in 1953, fueling the visions of his peers and ushering in a new era of open-heart surgery. Today, the heart-lung machine is an indispensable device that has extended the bounds of operative treatment beyond the most imaginative dreams.
Background
From the earliest days of medicine until the mid-1900s, tampering with the heart was considered taboo. For centuries, people regarded the human heart as the seat of our soul, our spirit, and our emotions, and as such the organ was off-limits to surgeons and doctors. Evidence of this belief is cemented in the writings of some of the earliest French surgeons. In 1648 Riolanus (a.k.a. Jean Riolan) described the heart as the "noblest organ in the body and the source of a life-giving substance which supplied the rest of the body with nourishment."
From the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, physicians observed heart functions and failure but did more to impede medical progress than to further it.
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