WONDERS OF SURGERY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9586, 4 September 1909, Page 3

WONDERS OF SURGERY.

The operation leported in our cable news the other morning of the successful insertion of a sheep's vein in the leg of a man is certainly wonderful, but it is not thd first time that a part of a living animal has been used to repair the human body. Some little time ago, m Auckland, a part of a of a sheep was successfully gratled on to the arm-bone of a man. The patient had necrosis in his arm near the shoulder and an Auckland surgeon cut away the diseased part, took a piece out of the leg-hone of an anaesthetised sheep.; and fitted the "living" piece of bor.e into the patient's arm. The patient is said to have recovered so completely as to be able to do heavy work with is repaired arm. The operation of grafting a piece of the.corner of a rabbits' eye on to the human corner is old, though it has been performed but a few times. But the investigations of Dr barrel, the French doctor who was the first to transfer veins and arteries from one animal to another, aim at the transplantation of whole organs. He has gone so far as to take the kidneys from one animal and place them in another animal. The survival of the latter animal has not been long, but it is saia to have been clearlv demonstrated that such gratfing is possible, and it is hoped that a prefectcd technique vill make it more durable. The experiments with veins and arteries are looked upon as highly important to tho future treatment of aneurisms and rupture of arteries. Sometimes an accident will cause laceration of the walls of an artery for some distance, a dangerous condition with which it is difficult to deal. Ic may now lie possible in some of these cases to cut away large sections of the artery and iv-establish circulation at once by the transpantation of a section of vein or artery from some .uiimal. It has even been suggested that it may be possible to send arterial bood to the human brain through the veins vvlien the arteiies have been unpaired by disease. We are warntd, however. that scuh discussion is purely theoretical, and that many experiments will be necessary before surgeons will feel justified in reversing the circulation of a patient.