Main description:

A history of the little-known or forgotten academic origins of modern organ transplant surgery.

This book investigates a crucial -- but forgotten -- episode in the history of medicine. In it, Thomas Schlich systematically documents and analyzes the earliest clinical and experimental organ transplant surgeries. In so doing helays open the historical origins of modern transplantation, offering a new and original analysis of its conceptual basis within a broader historical context.
This first comprehensive account of the birth of modern transplantmedicine examines how doctors and scientists between 1880 and 1930 developed the technology and rationale for performing surgical organ replacement within the epistemological and social context of experimental university medicine. The clinical application of organ replacement, however, met with formidable obstacles even as the procedure became more widely recognized. Schlich highlights various attempts to overcome these obstacles, including immunologicalexplanations and new technologies of immune suppression, and documents the changes in surgical technique and research standards that led to the temporary abandonment of organ transplantation by the 1930s.

Thomas Schlichis Professor and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at McGill University.

Contents:

An ancient dream of mankind?
What is special about organ transplantation?
Before organ replacement: A natural history approach to disease
The invention of organ transplantation
Organotherapy and organ replacement
Rise and decline of thyroid transplantation
The discovery of a new organ: the parathyroid gland
Laboratory and clinic: organ replacement for diabetes
The many uses of the adrenal gland
Reconstructing women: ovarian transplants
Rejuvenating men: testicle transplants
One principle, multiple applications: further organs
From special case to prototype: the kidney
Ethical problems with organ transplantation
Laboratory and clinic: the epistemic and social context
Methods of monitoring the success of transplants
Disillusionment: The clinical failure of organ transplantation
The strategy of technical perfection
A new direction: transplant immunology
Chance and necessity: a fresh start for organ transplantation