August 22, 2010
Happy 90th birthday to Dr. Denton A. Cooley, who was born on August 22, 1920. Dr. Cooley is the heart-transplant pioneer who was also the first surgeon to implant an artificial heart in a human. On April 4, 1969, because no donor heart was available for a dying 47-year-old patient with diseased heart muscle, he implanted a mechanical heart made of silicone as a temporary measure. The experimental artificial heart was used for 65 hours, and was removed when a human heart became available.
I love this quote from Dr. Cooley: "The heart is really a fascinating organ. It’s about the only organ in the body that you can really witness its function. Doing things. Some of the other organs you can witness, like the intestines, will have this sort of peristaltic motion. But nothing that can compare with the activity of the human heart."
The heart is indeed a fascinating organ. Here is what I wrote about it:
Try squeezing a rubber ball with your hand. Squeeze it hard once a second. Your hand will get tired in a minute or two. Yet your heart beats every second of every day. In one year your heart beats more than thirty million times. In an average lifetime a heart will beat of 2,000,000,000 (two thousand million) times. The heart is a most incredible pump.
This pump - your heart - powers a river unlike any river on Planet Earth. The river of blood in your body travels 60,000 miles…..that’s two and a half times around the world!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
