MARVEL OF SCIENCE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 20 May 1922, Page 8

MARVEL OF SCIENCE.

transplanting eyes. (By Ronald Campbell Macfie, M A M. 8.) ’ ’’ The enterprise and audacity of operative jmrgery during the last few decades have been simply astounding No organ in the body has escaped the attentione of the surgeon’s knife and needle. Glands have been transplanted; dimples have been dibbled; Roman noses have been constructed: gaps in the limb bones have been bridged with bits of leg-of-mutton bone; tumors have been cut out of the most vital convolu- • tions of the brain; severed arteries have ieen stitched together like lengths of hose-piping; and even the heart, itself has been sewn up like a tom bag. fet even still there remain new "onds for the modern surgeon to conquer, and within the last year a. voung Hungarian, student named Koppanyi ©fleeted a new operative miracle and opemed up ne wpossibilities lo surgery ' nder an anaesthetic, Koppanyi pain-k-sdy removed the eyes of rat, put the empty sockets eyes >om an-

; ■ rrat, and demonstrate-! hat the i insplanted eyes thrived, id grew, uid became useful organs of vision.

A few months ago I visited the Institute in Viehnt where- Koppanyi had; performed; him wonderful experiment. Koppanyi himself was on. leave, but his famous colleague. Professor Pribram (undbr whom the young Hungarian had worked), kindly introduced me tn a rat in possession o fanothe rat’e eves.

The transplanted eyes were bright and beady, and except that one was somewhat protuberant, both looked, absolutely normal. The pupils of the eyes, moreover, contrs/sfed to light, showing that they were functionally sound, and the rat itself was perky and active, jumped from my hand: into its cage, and behaved geni.ily as if it had perfect sight. The operation performed by Koppanyi was as simple as possible. Ho merely put the new eye-ball into the new socket, and prevented it from falling out by stitching the eyelids together. In a day or two the nerve joined, and soon the rat acquired the sense of sight.

Transplantation of eye:; had previously beqn carried' out. lu fishes and in amphibians; but this operation of Koppanyi’s was the first instance of transplantation of eyes, in a warmblooded mammalian animal, and wus not only very 'extraordVj..iry in itself, but at once suggesti-i the possibility of a similar transplar : ttion. of human •yes.

Yet, thoug in vie of Koppanyi’s operation there would seem, to be some hope of grafting even haman eyes, we must not be too sanguine. For in the first place, human beings have not gto the healing and recotst: active faculty of the lower animals; ;.o.d >.n the second place, human beings have peculiar chemical idiosyncrasies, &? that, unless giver and leceiver are near blood relatons, an organ transplanted from one man to another usually soon perishes. The first difficulty, however, may not be insuperable; and with regard to the secoid difficulty, it is certain, that many a father and a mother would gladly give one of their eyes to a child of their own. So that it is not impossible that the day may come v.-i’a-n . child blinded by some accident tay sde the world again through the eye of one of its parents.

Nevertheless, even if an. ©ya were successfully transplanted from one human being to another, it is extremely unlikely that it would ver acquire the understanding vision, of a normal human eye. The normal human eye has exceedingly intricate t. -rve connection with the intellect:ad Oratres of the brain, and a man who ofces an object or a word not only sees lb bub recognises its full intellectual significance. A transplanted eye would probably be little better than a rat’s eye, for though it might see objects- and words it would not recognise the r meanings Still, even a rat can see color and light, and the outline of. solid -abjecte, and a blind man would be glad to obtaineven suoh limited vision. „id a y well see a gleam of hope in Iv. ; • ’s wonderful operation.