344 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



Katcliff, 1936; Train, 1938). For years Carrel had been trying to 

 keep organs alive for long periods so that physiologists could study 

 their reactions. 



On May 22, 1931, Lindbergh published anonymously in Science a 

 brief report of an "Apparatus to Circulate Liquid under Constant 

 Pressure in a Closed System" (Anon., 1931). By 1934, Carrel re- 

 ported that a model had been developed which "permitted an entire 

 organ to live outside the body." RexDorting their success to the world 

 in 1935, Lindbergh and Carrel described some 26 different experiments 

 that had been performed. Organs that were successfully perfused 

 included thyroid, ovary, suprarenal, spleen, heart, and kidney (Carrel 

 and Lindbergh, 1935) . 



The perfusion pump, which was variously called "a robot heart" 

 and "the glass heart" by the lay press, was described and illustrated 

 by Lindbergh in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (Lindbergh, 

 1935). The apparatus consisted of two portions: one, the perfusion 

 pump containing the organ and the perfusion fluid; the second, a 

 chamber for the purpose of creating and transmitting a pulsating 

 gas pressure to the perfusion fluid (pi. 2, fig. 1). In a comprehensive 

 review of their work. Carrel and Lindbergh reported that with the 

 construction of larger pumps "we can perhaps dream of removing 

 diseased organs from the body and placing them in the Lindbergh 

 pump as patients are placed in a hospital. There they could be treated 

 far more energetically than within the organism, and if cured, re- 

 planted in the patient." However, Carrel concluded by warning the 

 overenthusiastic that the method was "not as yet fully developed. 

 Machines are always in the process of becoming. Their progress is 

 almost unlimited. Therefore, the cultivation of whole organs has 

 certainly not reached its final form"^ (Carrel and Lindbergh, 1938). 



In 1928, shortly before the Rockefeller Institute experiments com- 

 menced, at the National Institute for Medical Research in Hempstead, 

 England, H. H. Dale and E. H. J. Schuster devised a pump (called a 

 double perfusion pump) with the idea of using it as a replacement 

 for the heart in carrying on both major and minor circulations of the 

 whole body. The investigators, however, reported that "the pump 

 has not yet been used for its original purpose of producing a complete 

 circulation in the heartless animal." 



The device, which served as the basis for many later experimental 

 mechanical hearts, was designed so that two synchronously working 

 pumps would theoretically carry on both the major and minor circu- 

 lations of the body. According to Dale and Schuster, "in our experi- 



*According to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, "the Lindbergh- 

 Carrel perfusion apparatus has not been in use at the Institute since 1938." An 

 original model of the perfusion pump chamber is on exhibition at the Museum of 

 the International College of Surgeons, Chicago, 111. 



