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In 1967 Christian Barnard made a breakthrough in the field
of cardiovascular surgery becoming the first person to perform a heart
transplant on a human being. “On Saturday I was a surgeon in South Africa,
very little known. On Monday I was world renowned,” Dr. Barnard recalled
later. He expressed surprise at the publicity his own techniques had generated.
“I did not even inform the hospital superintendent what we were doing.”
Back then it seemed that Dr. Barnard had done the impossible disproving
the eternal human notion of the unavoidability of death and managing to
turn one’s end into a new start for another...
Even though the heart of the 25-year-old road accident victim,
Denise Darval, transplanted into the chest of the 50-plus year-old Louis
Washkansky beat there for just 18 days, medical history was made. Heart
transplants were performed in 23 countries in a single year and almost
all of Dr. Barbard’s patients successfully discharged from the Cape Town
clinic living with donor hearts from 1 to 24 years...
Christian Barnard was born in 1922 into the family of a poor
Afrikaner preacher in Beaufort West south of Cape Town. He would walk five
miles each day to study at Cape Town University before becoming a family
physician on the Western Cape. Barnard learned much from Vladimir Demikhov,
a Russian doctor who, as a third year medical student, developed the world’s
first artificial heart and experimented with implanting it into dogs. In
1952 Demikhov pioneered the heart bypass operation, which has since been
routinely performed everywhere.
By the time he attempted his first human heart transplant,
Dr. Barnard had already conducted many heart experiments on animals. He
then moved on to kidney transplants. Ironically, his first patient, a Mrs.
Black received the kidneys of a black donor. The following day newspapers
came out with splash headlines saying that Mrs. Black had gotten black
kidneys! The whole thing caused uproar among South Africa’s white minority.
After Dr. Barnard’s first heart transplant operation, a local
company offered to buy his operation gloves for 40,000 dollars. Barnard
refused. Even though Louis Washkansky lived only 18 days, the operation
came as a real coup de force. Christian Barnard operated until 1983, performing
a staggering 165 heart transplants until hand arthritis prevented him from
operating any more. Retired from active work, Barnard tried to find
a way of slowing the ageing process. He published several best-selling
books, including the famous The Donor thriller and the Good Life and Good
Death research about a doctor who, symbolizing victory over death, stands
up for the terminally ill patients’ right to euthanasia. Christian Barnard’s
unorthodox ideas were probably the reason why, repeatedly nominated for
the Nobel Prize, he never got the much-coveted award.
He was a figure that always courted controversy, constantly
clashing with the South African authorities over issues of apartheid. He
even wrote a book about the practice of racial segregation - a daring act
few well established whites would second. His most popular book, however,
was the one where he recounted his many love affairs. Gina Lollobrigida
and Sophia Loren were just two of the beautiful women with whom Barnard
kept company, their photos amply published in magazines. All three of his
marriages failed, the last one with Katrine Zetskorn who married the 66-year-old
celebrity as an 18-year-old young girl. Just like Barnard’s previous
two spouses, Katrine bore him two children, but the marriage still broke
apart just a year before Barnard’s death. The divorce caused a big sensation
forcing Barnard to move to Austria.
Touted as a saint, he was always a bit short of sanctity.
Working miracles with the human heart, he kept calling it a mere pump,
heading to a date with Sophia Loren right from an audience with the Pope...
Setting up a fund for the benefit of coronary-challenged children, but
failing to prevent one of his sons from taking his own life... Marrying
three times and always to women young enough to be his daughters... Summing
up his many years of medical research in The Fifty Ways To a Healthy Heart
book, he insisted that regular lovemaking alone held the key to longevity...
Christian Barnard died quietly by the poolside in the Coral
Beach Hotel in Cyprus where the 78-year-old scholar was vacationing with
his new young flame. Local medics said it might have been a heart
attack. In his hotel room they found, among other things, a copy of Barnard’s
book Good Life and Good Death...
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