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I believe that perhaps
the seminal set of events (or era) for artificial organs was the immediate
postwar period (late forties and early fifties at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital
in Boston (now, of course, Brigham and Womens). Dr. George Thorn was working
on the "crush syndrome", following the London blitzkrieg. In addition to
his hospital responsibilities, he was (for some of this time) Chairman of
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also played a role in these events.
Thorn was a remarkable leader and teacher as well as clinician, so I think
he deserves a lot of credit for the work of other outstanding people, like
John Merrill, who died, tragically, at such a young age … a small collection
of people in one place during one short era did all of the following:
- evaluated the original Kolff prototype dialyzer;
- did important clinical and research work with victims of kidney trauma;
- were at the forefront of kidney transplantation;
- experimented with the early Baxter-Kolff machine on a number of patients, using Hughes Foundation and Baxter grants;
- sent the first patient home on hemodialysis; and
- "colonized" other institutions, like Georgetown, which were to become leaders in this field.
As an historian, of sorts, I believe this moment in time encapsulated and presaged
much of what later followed in the artificial organs field of endeavor.
And, as can be observed elsewhere in artificial organs, it was a case of
an eclectic group of talented individuals from different orbits coming together
around a difficult problem, and emerging with a very different outcome from
what they expected. |
