Into the heart, a medical odyssey

Back to Chapter Two: Invasive Procedures

Dr. Walt Lillehei

Chapter 3:
Dog Lab

When it crossed his desk that summer of 1952, The British Journal of Surgery seemed unlikely to tantalize Walt Lillehei. The most promising heart research was in America, not Britain, where a powerful anti-vivisection movement dating from Queen Victoria's reign impeded animal experimentation. Without live animals, Lillehei knew, you got nowhere.

Like Victoria's fading empire, this latest issue of the British Journal was uninspiring. Reading its pages, you had no sense that a great epoch might be near. Lillehei scanned through workmanlike articles on cancers of the rectum, penis, and muscle; he read about a surgical procedure for amputating the human hindquarter, which is the leg from the hip down. Lillehei's boss, Owen Wangensteen, would have been intrigued, but not a young surgeon intent on getting inside the human heart.

Lillehei was nearly through looking at the journal when a title stopped him: ``Experimental Cardiovascular Surgery.''