MECHANICAL HEART — GRIFFENHAGEN AND HUGHES 343 



those suppljing the heart itself, while leaving the pulmonary circulation intact. 

 The heart and lungs being supplied with blood alone retain the vitality; all 

 extraneous nerve centers getting no blood soon die with the remainder of the 

 animal ... so far . . . dogs only have been used, and defibrinated strained 

 calf's blood has been the medium employed to nourish the isolated heart. 

 (Martin, 1883.) 



Martin's arrangement for the isolated heart and hing became known 

 as a heart-lung preparation, a procedure which, with modification, has 

 since been employed by many workers in the field. 



Even though the ancients taught that the arteries carried blood 

 mixed with air, it was not until the eighteenth century that the theory 

 was proved. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) demonstrated 

 that respiration caused chemical alterations in the respired air and 

 that some of the oxygen, or "vital air" as he called it, was actually 

 absorbed by the blood. With the increased interest in perfusion ex- 

 periments, considerable attention was paid to the artificial oxygen- 

 ation of blood. 



In 1885 von Frey and Gruber of Germany devised an artificial lung 

 by means of which aeration of the blood could be accomplished without 

 interrupting the flow of blood to the region being perfused. They 

 attached the piston of a syringe supplying the arterial pressure to a 

 motor-driven wheel, thus creating pulsating pressure by mechanical 

 means. In 1890, Jacobi devised an elaborate perfusion apparatus 

 in which the blood was aerated by forcing a mixture of air and venous 

 blood through a stretch of tubing at the end of which the blood 

 and air were separated by means of gravitation (Belt, Smith, and 

 ^Vliipple, 1920). 



In 1903 T. G. Brodie, director of the research laboratories of the 

 Royal College of Physicians in London reported that he was able 

 to perfuse an organ with the use of no other blood than that ob- 

 tained from the animal itself — a considerable advantage over many 

 of the types previously employed (Brodie, 1903). 



Numerous other forms of perfusion apparatuses were devised dur- 

 ing the first quarter of the twentieth century. In 1915, at Johns 

 Hopkins University, D, R. Hooker devised a revolving flat disk which 

 threw the blood in a thin film against the sides of an inverted glass 

 bell jar. Also in 1915, at the University of Pennsylvania, A. N. Rich- 

 ards and C. K. Drinker described a method of oxygenating blood by 

 allowing it to run through a silk curtain exposed to oxygen (Belt, 

 Smith, and Whipple, 1920). 



One of the most highly publicized perfusion pumps of all time 

 originated in the Rockefeller Institute in New York City in the early 

 1930's. According to reports, in 1930 famed aviator Charles A. Lind- 

 bergh went secretly to w^ork as a biomechanical assistant to equally 

 famous biologist and Nobel prize winner Alexis Carrel (Anon., 1935; 



370930—56 23 



