Shrine to the world’s first heart transplant
• Richard Holmes commemorates the achievement of Chris Barnard and his maverick surgeons
In many ways, it is just an average clock. Black rim. Sober lettering. Government issue. Unremarkable, except that it has stopped; the time in operating theatre 2A forever frozen at 5.58am.
And, with good reason. Because at that moment in the early hours of December 3 1967, just as dawn was breaking over Cape Town’s Groote Schuur Hospital, the heart of Denise Darvall was restarted with a jolt of electricity and began beating again. A steady rhythm; healthy and measured. Unremarkable, perhaps.
Except now, it was beating in the chest of Louis Washkansky.
That moment is the culmination of a tale expertly told in one of Cape Town’s most remarkable small museums. A space that celebrates maverick surgeons and medical marvels, while acknowledging the family tragedy that surrounded the remarkable accomplishment of the world’s first human heart transplant.
“This is not just a museum. This is a heritage site. This is where it all happened,” says Hennie Joubert, founder of the Heart of Cape Town Museum, as we wander through the pillared entrance of what was once Groote Schuur’s trauma department.
Inside, the bustle that surrounds Cape Town’s largest public hospital dies away, and the quiet of linoleum corridors takes over.
Here Joubert has built a fascinating small museum that traces the history of heart transplant research, the bold steps taken by doctors in SA and abroad, and — finally — Prof Christiaan Barnard’s landmark surgery that forever changed the face of medicine.
But the museum is not a simple paean to Barnard. Rather, the story begins with a fascinating series of exhibits, and a short documentary, that introduces the star surgeons and supporting doctors who were part of the race to accomplish the world’s first human heart transplant.
There is a nod to Hamilton Naki, who assisted in early surgical trials despite the restrictions of apartheid. Pioneering work by US surgeons — David Hume at the Medical College of Virginia and Norman Shumway at Stanford University School of Medicine — are credited for their work in surgical techniques.
Marius Barnard, arguably the Buzz Aldrin of this world first, also receives overdue recognition. It was he who removed Darvall’s heart in theatre 2B, while Chris Barnard waited with Washkansky in the operating theatre alongside.
While many may know the name of Louis Washkansky, it is fascinating to discover his story too. A local grocer of Lithuanian origin, Washkansky had been admitted three weeks before the transplant, with little chance of recovery from his progressive heart failure.
In the room where he recovered after the surgery, his original prognosis quickly caught my eye. In scrawled handwriting, a doctor has surmised, “No operation will help. Let nature take its course.”
Barnard, of course, disagreed and was waiting for a suitable donor to prove that diagnosis wrong.
Which introduces us to Denise Darvall. Alongside a recreation of Barnard’s office, an entire room is given over to the life of the healthy 25-year-old bank clerk who was run over and killed — as was her mother, Myrtle — by a car on Main Road close to Groote Schuur.
In the museum, her bedroom is faithfully recreated with family photos, romance novels and diary entries sketching a picture of the young woman and her family. Perhaps most poignant here are the words of Darvall’s father, Edward, now a widower and about to lose his fatally injured daughter, who gave Barnard permission to attempt the transplant.
“Well, doctor, if you can’t save my daughter, try to save this man.”
Which is what Barnard and his team of 20 surgeons set out to do in operating theatres 2A and 2B, which have been recreated with impressive attention to detail.
Joubert, who opened the museum in 2007 to mark the 40th anniversary of the transplant, has spent years — not to mention millions of his own money — tracing the original surgical equipment and restoring the operating theatres.
“I wanted to make the museum back to exactly how it looked the night of the operation. I became obsessed with it,” says Joubert with a smile.
“The documentation of Groote Schuur Hospital was very accurate, so all the serial numbers of all the equipment that was in the theatre the night of the operation was available.”
With that information in hand, Joubert got to work.
He tracked down the scale used to measure blood loss in a hospital storeroom. The light from theatre 2B he found in a local veterinary hospital, and convinced the owners to return the original to the museum.
The theatre bed on which Darvall had been lying had been donated to the Catholic hospital in Windhoek. Again, Joubert convinced the hospital to return this piece of SA history to its rightful place.
That authenticity ensures the high point of the museum does not resort to kitsch diorama, adding gravitas to the space. Instead of a gaudy recreation, there is a palpable sense of the historic events that took place here in the early hours of December 3 1967.
The news of Barnard’s achievement immediately made headlines worldwide, and display cases are filled with the original letters and telegrams that flew in from presidents and competing surgeons, hailing the achievement. But not everyone was impressed.
“To The Butcher of Groote Schuur Hospital,” reads the note from Mary Power Slattery in Chicago. “A bunch of ghouls, all of you,” wrote S Peschel from Arlington, Virginia.
Ego-driven ghoul or lifesaving pioneer, you decide. But before you leave, seek out the small wooden display case in theatre 2B. Here you will find two glass cubes filled with formalin. On the left; Washkansky’s diseased heart. On the right, is the heavily sutured heart of Denise Darvall.
Ultimately, Washkansky lived for only 18 days after the transplant, before succumbing to double pneumonia. Darvall’s heart however, beat strongly to the end.
WELL, DOCTOR, IF YOU CAN’T SAVE MY DAUGHTER, TRY TO SAVE THIS MAN