Heart transplant

On 3 December 1967 surgeon Christiaan Barnard and his team at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town replaced the failing heart of 53-year-old Louis Washkansky with the heart of a young woman who died in a road accident. Washkansky lived 18 days before dying of pneumonia, but the operation proved that the idea could work.

Early transplant patients rarely survived long. Anti-rejection drugs developed later made the operation routine.