LIVING ORGANS TO ORDER.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVI, Issue 10410, 25 July 1912, Page 7

LIVING ORGANS TO ORDER.

Surgeons in the United States can now order and receive within a few hoars practically every part of the human body, the same to be delivered in a living and growing condition. As a housewife la New York can be supplied on demand with daily oeoeEßit ®i, so can American Burgeons ba supplied with parts of the human heart, noryes, blood vessels, spleen, some bt the smaller glands of the body, the cornea of the ey, parfalof the v&'?ocs bonse, cartilages, etc. These remarkable statements wsra made by Dr. Alexis Oarrel, of New York, who is in charge of the research work at the Rockieller Institute, to a gathering in Atlantic City of members of tbe American Medical Association, Dr. Oarrel startled the meeting by a unique offer to supply, and went on to declare that it has become possible to make such parts live after they have been removed from She body. He said ho oonld make parts live and grow nine months after life had ceased in the 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 medicino baa an opportunity to- avail itself of the discovery. Dr. Oarrel began So experiment on the lower orders of animals. A piece of the heart of a chicken pulsated and was alive for as Jong as 104 days after 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 be deoalers that he obtains his parts for preservation by removing them from dead bodies. It is possible, he says, to transplant after death the tisanes and organs which compose a body that baa 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 though it had been there from birth.' ■

Clinical reports, said Dr. Oarrel, 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. Oarrel, is quits capable of carrying out rush aiders, and only recently they had 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 waa sent by express in a tiny rarf;ger*tor, arrived safely, and was used. The patient recovered tbe use of his lag, and is walking about as though he had never had any trouble with it. This advance so surgery simplifies the methods of transplanting skin and bone. Surgeons used to graft sfein s from one living creature to aaother. They ’Used to scrape the lag'of a dog, and strap the animal to the patient. Now science has glvea the srugeon living skin, living bona, add the living glands that are most essential to life, and all he hsa to do is to break fibs seal of the refrigerator, place thei part in position, arsd it grows.