HUMAN ORGANS TO ORDER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3592, 3 August 1912, Page 10

HUMAN ORGANS TO ORDER.

WHAT THE AMERICAN DOCTOR CAN DO.

Surgeons in the United States -can now order and receive within a few hours practically every parr of the human body, the same to be delivered in a living and- growing condition. As a -housewife in New York can bo supplied on demand with daily necessities, so can American surgeons be supplied with parts of the human heart, nerves, blood-vessels, spleen, some of the smaller glands of the body, the corner of the eye, parts of the various bones, cartilages, etc. These remarkable statements were made by Dr. Alexis Carrel, of New York, who is in charge of the research work at- the Rockefeller Institute, to a gathering in Atlantic City of members o-f the American Medical Association. Dr- Carrel startled the meeting by a unique offer of supply, and went on to declare that it has*become possible to make such parts live after they have been removed from the body. He said he could make parts livo and grow nine months after life had ceased in tlio human body from which they had been removed. For six years these experiments have been going on, and now that they have been completed and verified the world of medicine has an opportunity to avail itself of tho discovery. -Dr. Carrel began to experiment- on the lower orders of animals. A piece of the heart ot a chicken pulsated, and was alive for as long as 104 days after it had been removed from the fowl, and microscopic examination revealed the fact that connective tissue was growing from it- five months after removal. Dr. Carrel uses nine mediums in which to preserve the life of structures removed from the body, and ho declares that he obtains his parts for preservation by removing them from dead bodies. It is possible, he says, to transplant after death the tissues and organs which compose a body that has ceased to live into other identical organisms. In this transfer no death of the tissues occurs, and after they have been made part of another body life in them continues as thought it had been there from birth.

Clinical reports, said Dr. Carrel, show conclusively that his system of transplanting is successful, so that with the experiments completely verified it was possible to inform the profession that the institute was prepared to '"supply them on short notice. The institute, said Dr. Carrel, is quite capable of carrying out rush orders, and only, recently they hud occasion to rush an order from Chicago to New York, for cartilage which was wanted for use in a case of knee disease. The cartilage was sent by express in a tiny refrigerator, arrived safely, and was used. Tlie patient recovered the use Of his leg, and is warning about as though he had never had any trouble with it-.

This advance in surgery simplifies the method of transplanting slun aim bone. Surgeons used to graft skin from one living creature to another. They vised to scrape the log of a dog, and strap the animal to the patient. Now science has given the surgeon living, glands that are most essential to life, and all he has to do is to break the seal of the refrigerator, place the part in position, and it grows.