Can’t beat history’s wonders

TIME really flies. It’s just over two weeks to Christmas and seven days later we will welcome the New Year.

It is unbelievably half a century ago that the world received, with great excitement, the breaking news of the first human heart transplant that was performed by a crack team at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, under the able leadership of Dr Chris Barnard.

This was a world first and rocketed the brilliant doctor, his fine team and South Africa into the global limelight.

Denise Darvall, aged 25, was left brain-dead as a result of a horrific car accident. Louis Washkansky was the recipient of her heart.

Sadly Washkansky died not long thereafter. In later years, after receiving celebrity status, Dr Barnard’s brilliant career ended prematurely as he suffered from crippling arthritis.

This charismatic man was not only a world famous surgeon, but also strongly opposed apartheid.

Fortunately, medical science has progressed in leaps and bounds since late December 1967, when the historic transplant occurred and cardiac and related issues, though complicated, costly and life-threatening, are a common medical procedure with triple and other bypasses, and open surgery operations, being performed successfully almost on a daily basis.

I believe that even non-open surgery is now possible as a marvel of science emanating from man’s ingenuity.

SIMON T DEHAL Verulam