Editing Christiaan Barnard (section)

==Career==
Barnard did his [[internship (medicine)|internship]] and [[residency (medicine)|residency]] at the [[Groote Schuur Hospital]] in Cape Town, after which he worked as a general practitioner in [[Ceres, Western Cape|Ceres]], a rural town in the [[Cape Province]].<ref name="mcrae2006">''Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart'', [[Donald McRae (author)|Donald McRae]], New York: Penguin (Berkley/Putnam), 2006. See esp. Ch. 10 "The Wait" and Ch. 11 "Fame and Heartbreak", pages 173–214.</ref> In 1951, he returned to Cape Town where he worked at the City Hospital as a Senior Resident Medical Officer, and in the Department of Medicine at Groote Schuur as a registrar.<ref name="mcrae2006" /> He completed his master's degree, receiving Master of Medicine in 1953 from the University of Cape Town. In the same year he obtained a doctorate in medicine (MD) from the same university for a dissertation titled "The treatment of tuberculous meningitis".

Soon after qualifying as a doctor, Barnard performed experiments on dogs while investigating [[intestinal atresia]], congenital, life-threatening obstructions in the intestines. He followed a medical hunch that this was caused by inadequate blood flow to the fetus. After nine months and forty-three attempts, Barnard was able to reproduce this condition in a fetus puppy by tying off some of the blood supply to a puppy's intestines and then placing the animal back in the womb, after which it was born some two weeks later, with the condition of intestinal atresia. He was also able to cure the condition by removing the piece of intestine with inadequate blood supply. The mistake of previous surgeons had been attempting to reconnect ends of intestine which themselves still had inadequate blood supply. To be successful, it was typically necessary to remove between 15 and 20 centimeters of intestine (6 to 8 inches). Jannie Louw used this innovation in a clinical setting, and Barnard's method saved the lives of ten babies in Cape Town. This technique was also adapted by surgeons in Britain and the US. In addition, Barnard analyzed 259 cases of [[tubercular meningitis]].<ref name="Every Second Counts, pages 48–49, Barnard's work remedying intestinal atresia">''Every Second Counts'', McRae, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Fv9dRT9TC4C&dq=%22Soon+after+qualifying+as+a+doctor%2C+Barnard+produced+a+staggering+piece+of+experimental+research%22&pg=PT45 pages 48–49].</ref>

[[Owen Harding Wangensteen|Owen Wangensteen]] at the [[University of Minnesota]] in the United States had been impressed by the work of Alan Thal, a young South African doctor working in Minnesota. Wangensteen asked the Groote Schuur Head of Medicine John Brock if he might recommend any similarly talented South Africans, and Brock recommended Barnard.<ref name="Every Second Counts, page 49, Barnard goes to Minnesota">''Every Second Counts'', McRae, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Fv9dRT9TC4C&dq=%22In+December+1955%2C+Christiaan+Barnard+flew+to+the+city+of+snow%22&pg=PT47 page 49].</ref> In December 1955, Barnard travelled to [[Minneapolis, Minnesota]] to begin a two-year scholarship under Chief of Surgery Wangensteen, who assigned Barnard more work on the intestines, which Barnard accepted even though he wanted to move onto something new.<ref name="Every Second Counts, page 51">''Every Second Counts'', McRae, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Fv9dRT9TC4C&dq=%22Wangensteen+considered+gastrointestinal+research+to+be+intellectually+delicious%22&pg=PT48 page 51].</ref> Simply by luck, whenever Barnard needed a break from this work, he could wander across the hall and talk with [[Vince Gott]] who ran the lab for open-heart surgery pioneer [[C. Walton Lillehei|Walt Lillehei]]. Gott had begun to develop a technique of running blood backwards through the veins of the heart so Lillehei could more easily operate on the aortic valve (McRae writes, "It was the type of inspired thinking that entranced Barnard"). In March 1956, Gott asked Barnard to help him run the heart-lung machine for an operation.<ref name="Every Second Counts, page 53, Barnard meets Vince Gott">''Every Second Counts'', McRae, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Fv9dRT9TC4C&dq=%22Whenever+he+needed+a+break+from+the+gullet%2C+Barnard+wandered+across+the+hall%22&pg=PT50 page 53].</ref> Shortly thereafter, Wangensteen agreed to let Barnard switch to Lillehei's service. It was during this time that Barnard became acquainted with fellow future heart transplantation surgeon [[Norman Shumway]].<ref name="Invest-Surg-2010">{{Cite journal |last=Toledo-Pereyra LH |year=2010 |title=Christiaan Barnard |journal=J Invest Surg |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=72–78 |doi=10.3109/08941939.2010.484321 |pmid=20497008 |s2cid=44625805 |quote=under pioneer surgeons C. Walton Lillehei and Richard L. Varco. Many future distinguished cardiac surgeons, such as Shumway, Cabrol, and many others, were his contemporaries at Minnesota.}}</ref> Barnard also became friendly with Gil Campbell, who had demonstrated that a dog's lung could be used to oxygenate blood during open-heart surgery. (The year before Barnard arrived, Lillehei and Campbell had used this procedure for twenty minutes during surgery on a 13-year-old boy with ventricular septal defect, and the boy had made a full recovery.) Barnard and Campbell met regularly for early breakfast.<ref>''Every Second Counts'', McRae, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2Fv9dRT9TC4C&dq=%22the+South+African+relaxed+a+little+and+became+friendly+with+Gil+Campbell%22&pg=PT51 page 54].</ref> In 1958, Barnard received a Master of Science in Surgery for a thesis titled "The [[aortic valve]] – problems in the fabrication and testing of a prosthetic valve".<ref name="mcrae2006" /> The same year he was awarded a Ph.D. for his dissertation titled "The aetiology of congenital intestinal [[atresia]]".<ref name="mcrae2006" /> Barnard described the two years he spent in the United States as "the most fascinating time in my life."{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

Upon returning to South Africa in 1958, Barnard was appointed head of the Department of Experimental Surgery at Groote Schuur hospital, as well as holding a joint post at the [[University of Cape Town]].<ref name="BMJ-Raymond-Hoffenberg-December-2001">{{Cite journal |last=Hoffenberg R |year=2001 |title=Christiaan Barnard: his first transplants and their impact on concepts of death |journal=BMJ |volume=323 |issue=7327 |pages=1478–80 |doi=10.1136/bmj.323.7327.1478 |pmc=1121917 |pmid=11751363}}</ref><ref name="Dictionary-of-African-Biography-Volume-6-2012">''Dictionary of African Biography, Volume 6'', Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., editors-in-chief, [https://books.google.com/books?id=39JMAgAAQBAJ&dq=%22as+well+as+surgical+work+and+teaching%2C+he+did+advanced+work+in+research+laboratories%22&pg=PA386 Barnard, Christiaan Neethling], Anne Digby, Oxford University Press, 2012.</ref> He was promoted to full-time lecturer and Director of Surgical Research at the University of Cape Town. In 1960, he flew to Moscow in order to meet [[Vladimir Demikhov]], a top expert on [[Organ transplantation|organ transplants]]<ref>Bosco, Teresio (1968) ''{{interlanguage link|Uomini come noi|it}}'', Società Editrice Internazionale</ref> (later he credited Demikhov's accomplishment saying that "if there is a father of heart and lung transplantation then Demikhov certainly deserves this title.")<ref>Fricke, T. A.; Konstantinov, I. E. (2013) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=pejGYnnkddwC&pg=PA82 Dawn and Evolution of Cardiac Procedures]'', [[Springer (publisher)|Springer]]</ref> In 1961 he was appointed Head of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the teaching hospitals of the University of Cape Town. He rose to associate professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town in 1962. Barnard's younger brother [[Marius Barnard (surgeon)|Marius]], who also studied medicine, eventually became Barnard's right-hand man at the department of Cardiac Surgery.<ref name="mcrae2006" /> Over time, Barnard became known as a brilliant surgeon with many contributions to the treatment of cardiac diseases, such as the [[Tetralogy of Fallot]] and [[Ebstein's anomaly]]. He was promoted to Professor of Surgical Science in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town in 1972. In 1981, Barnard became a founding member of the [[World Cultural Council]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=About Us |url=http://www.consejoculturalmundial.org/about-us/ |access-date=8 November 2016 |publisher=[[World Cultural Council]]}}</ref> Among the recognition he received over the years, he was named [[Emeritus|Professor Emeritus]] in 1984.