WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 100, 28 March 1939, Page 9

WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

DR CARREL'S HEART. Dr Carrel lias more than one heart. Wo live in a wonderful world, a world in which anything is possible; and now we may go to New York and see there, in the .Rock!oiler institute Dr Alexis Carrel’s second heart alive though it has no body for which to beat.

The heart is preserved in a kind of broth which supplies it with all the food it needs for nerves and muscle, but lacks the germs which are the cause of disease, and ultimately of death.

Year after year this heart beats on tirelessly, perhaps the. most astonishing thing in all America, crowded with wonder though it is. In collaboration with Colonel Lindbergh, the famous airman, Dr Carrel keeps alive lover as long a period as 20 years) tissues and other parts of the bodies of animals. Into'the solution in which the heart is immersed is pumped air with a plentiful supply of oxygen, and the whole apparatus is kept at body temperature. Contrary to popular opinion, Dr Carrel is not trying to keep this heart alive in order to set up a record. He is not interested in that. 1 lis idea is to be able to study an organ while it is alive, and to see what keeps it alive, and what might be the cause of death. Death, it would seem, comes from without rather than from within, and this wonderful investigator does well to probe deeply into the mystery of life—indeed, into the very heart of things.—(L).