Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: first heart transplant

  • Christiaan Barnard and the first heart transplant

    Philip R. LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States In 1968 while I was a cardiology fellow at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, there was a buzz of excitement—Christiaan Barnard was coming to talk about his heart transplants! Our chief cardiovascular surgeon at the time was C. Walton Lillehei, no slouch of a surgeon himself, who had…

  • Christiaan Barnard

    Shameemah AbrahamsSouth Africa The year 1945 is iconic as the end of one of the most pivotal and devastating periods in human history—World War II. That same year, as the world began to rebuild, in the coastal city of Cape Town at the tip of Africa, a young medical graduate began what would become an…