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By 1929 Dr. Carrel had reached the point at which his work was being seriously retarded for lack of a germ-proof pump. A German flier and aeronautical engineer, Heinz Rosenberger, whom he had imported from Berlin, built a self-contained pump with a piston oscillated from outside by electromagnets. This "failed completely.'' Flier Rosenberger eventually retired to Sandy Hook, Conn, to make moving pictures of microorganisms.
Colonel Lindbergh, who was at loose ends and had been introduced to Dr. Carrel by the anesthetist who attended Mrs. Lindbergh during the birth of their first two babies, was at once fascinated by the Carrel problem. He offered to lend his knowledge of mechanics. His first effort was a rocking, glass spiral which swished blood to the top of the apparatus and down through whatever organ lay connected thereto. This did not work.
Pertinacious, he tried other methods, and four years later perfected.
The Pump-Looking like a twist of vitrified bowel oozing out of a clear glass bottle, the Lindbergh perfusion pump consists of three chambers one above the other. The organ to be studied lies on the slanting glass floor of the topmost. Nutritious fluid from the lowest or reservoir chamber is driven up a glass tube connected with the organ's artery, to and through the organ by pulsating gas pressure. After passing through the organ, the fluid runs down into the central or pressure equalization chamber, back to the reservoir chamber. There are no moving parts. The whole apparatus is actuated by compressed air from a tank, controlled by a rotary valve which creates the pulsating pressure. Nonabsorbent cotton in bulbs through which the gases pass, keeps germs from getting into the apparatus, the organ, or the fluid.
Thus the "heart" action of the pump. To imitate lungs, there is an inlet for air or other gas into the blood. To remove the waste products of this disembodied living. Dr. Carrel needs a glass "kidney." Colonel Lindbergh, 3,000 miles away from the Rockefeller Institute, this week is cogitating that problem.
In this perfusion pump Dr. Carrel has kept thyroid glands, ovaries, hearts, kidneys and pancreases of guinea pigs and cats alive for as long as 30 days. He has caused pancreases to produce insulin; thyroids, thyroid hormone.
Meaning. By changing the constituents of the perfusing fluids, Dr. Carrel caused these organs to develop abnormalities. All this means "that the body can be dissected into living parts. . . . Anatomy has been rendered capable of describing the body as it really is. ... It becomes possible to study wound healing. The process of inflammation can be analyzed in its elements. . . .