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First Successful Organ Transplant
Breaking the Barrier of Organ Rejection
Thesis
"We advised neither for nor against the operation, and we stated the obvious: We could not know if it would work."
- Dr. Joseph Murray, Transplant Surgeon
Between the early 1900s and 1930s, many experiments were done on organ transplantation to determine all of the factors that needed to be considered before operating on patients. Finally, in 1954, Joseph Murray, John Merrill, and J. Hartwell Harrison performed the first successful organ transplant, a frontier in medical history. The recipient lived another eight years. Since then, organ transplantation has continued to change as medical knowledge has progressed. Nearly every organ can be transplanted today.
"Richard Herrick, front left, and his twin brother Ron, front right, pose with doctors, from top left, Joseph Murray, John Merrill and J. Hartwell Harrison, in 1954. Murray was lead surgeon in the first successful organ transplant in which Ron donated a kidney to Richard, who suffered from chronic nephritis, an inflamation of the kidneys."
(Dean)