(Image: Smithsonian)
DEAR Tin Man. If you really want a heart, forget the Wizard of Oz. Head instead to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington DC. There you will find a dazzling history of artificial hearts, .
It may resemble a tea trolley, but this enormous contraption is one of the earliest heart-lung machines. Designed to temporarily stand in for the heart, these pumped blood around the body until the real one was up to the job again. Called , it was built in 1957.
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(Image: Smithsonian)
The owl-like device, pictured here, also bypasses the heart and lungs during operations, giving surgeons a “dry field” to work on. The was developed in 1952 by General Motors in Detroit, Michigan.
(Image: Smithsonian)
Here we have a more modern device – a real replacement heart, made from plastic and titanium. Robert Tools was the first recipient of the AbioCor heart, in an operation on 2 July 2001 in the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. Fourteen people received before the company behind them, Abiomed, shifted to making the smaller hearts now used.
The take-home message? No wizards required.
See more artificial hearts at .
This article appeared in print under the headline “Be still my beating heart”
