MECHANICAL HEART GRIFFENHAGEN AND HUGHES 345 



ence, as in that of other workers, the use of the hmgs for oxygenation 

 preserves the blood in a much more physiological condition than does 

 an artificial oxygenator." The original pump devised by Dale and 

 Schuster (pi. 3, fig. 1) was made by C. F. Palmer, Ltd., of England. 



In 1929, O. S. Gibbs of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, demon- 

 strated an artificial heart before the Nova Scotia Institute of Science. 

 The apparatus consisted of two small rubber bellows contained in a 

 round brass box, with a lid and inlet and outlet valves at the base of 

 the bellows. It was heated by nicrome wire wound on a pyrex tube 

 with a car battery supplying the current. With this apparatus, a com- 

 plete bypass of the heart was effected on cats for one to three hours, 

 but no survival was reported (Gibbs, 1930). In 1930, at the request 

 of R. L. Stehle of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, Gibbs 

 prepared a similar "artificial heart" of the size suitable for use with 

 dogs ; and the following year, Stehle reported on its use on dogs (Mel- 

 ville and Stehle, 1931). While at the University of Georgia in 1933, 

 Gibbs further reported on artificial heart experiments which were 

 carried out on dogs at the Pharmakologisches Institute in Vienna, 

 Austria (Gibbs, 1933). 



For years physicians had been trying to find a safe way into the 

 himian heart to operate on its walls and its valves (King, 1941 ; Bailey, 

 1955), Most of these scientists believed that the practical answer to 

 the problem was a mechanical heart to take over and give the surgeons 

 a "dry field" free of blood so they could see what they were doing. The 

 only argument was on how it should be accomplished. One group 

 thought the way to do it was to make a substitute for one side (or both 

 sides) of the heart and let the lungs do their work as usual. The other 

 group wanted to bypass the entire heart as well as the lungs, and add 

 oxygen to the blood by some artificial means. In either instance, the 

 work in perfusion, which was performed primarily so that the physi- 

 ologist could more carefully study the isolated organs, served as a basis 

 for the new experiments. 



In a review of pump oxygenators to supplant the heart and lungs, 

 a University of Minnesota research group (Karlson, Dennis, West- 

 over, and Sanderson, 1951) briefly outlined some of the many ap- 

 proaches to the problem. Commencing with the Frey and Gruber 

 perfusion oxygenator of 1885, which we have already discussed, they 

 describe such procedures as bubbling air or oxygen through the con- 

 tents of a reservoir, or pumping the gas through tubing of the per- 

 fusion system along with the blood. In either case, bubble traps were 

 necessary to prevent embolization. Spraying blood and oxygen to- 

 gether so that droplets of blood mix with a stream of oxygen has been 

 tried. Blood filmed upon the inner surface of a slowly revolving 

 cylinder or spiral, or upon a silk curtain mounted in an oxygen at- 



