50 Years Ago

More than a hundred hearts have been transplanted in the 18 months since Dr C. N. Barnard first undertook the operation. The largest single group — fifteen operations — has been performed at the Texas Heart Institute by Dr Denton A. Cooley and his colleagues. The summary of their experience is that … a heart transplant improves the quality of, but does not greatly prolong, the life of the average recipient. But length and quality of survival are directly related to closeness of histocompatibility between donor and recipient, a factor on which future operations should be made to depend. Cooley and colleagues report that the mean survival time of their fifteen transplant patients is 111 days compared with the 74 days lived by patients marked as potential recipients but for whom no donor became available.

From Nature 24 May 1969

100 Years Ago

A correspondent forwards us a newspaper cutting from South Africa directing attention to the possibilities of the prickly pear (Opuntia spp.) as a source of industrial alcohol … The plant in question covers thousands of acres of good soil in South Africa, and is a pest to farmers … It may be remarked that the question of producing alcohol from the prickly pear has been carefully studied in Australia; the conclusion drawn, however, was unfavourable … Distillation experiments yielded alcohol equivalent to only 0.5 per cent of the weight of the plant used, so that the manufacture was considered unprofitable, and, indeed, scarcely practicable. But the South African prickly pear is said to be much richer in sugar … and this, of course, may make all the difference between success and failure in utilising the plant.

From Nature 23 May 1919