September 2nd
Christiaan Neethling Barnard was a South African surgeon who performed the world’s first human heart transplant surgery. In a five-hour operation on December 3, 1967, Barnard successfully replaced Louis Washkansky’s diseased heart with a healthy heart from Denise Darvall, a woman in her 20s with the same blood type. , died in hospital after a car accident. Washkansky died 18 days later of double pneumonia caused by a suppressed immune system. Still, it’s a major milestone in the new field of life-prolonging surgery. Died September 2, 2001 at the age of 78.
