Alexis Carrel was once very famous. In 1912 he was the youngest Noble Prize winner (in Physiology or Medicine), the first surgeon, and the first whose Nobel Prize-winning research was carried out in the US. He is justly celebrated as a pioneer in vascular surgery, the father of transplant surgery, an early practitioner of cell culture, and much besides.1 Yet, now he is largely forgotten. Why?
A PIONEER OF TRANSPLANT SURGERY
Carrel’s story starts with the assassination of French President Carnot in 1894. Carrel was a medical student; 21 years old. Carnot was attacked by an anarchist with a dagger, tearing his portal vein. Carnot died; at that time no surgeon knew how to suture veins or arteries. Carrel was studying in Lyons, the home of the French silk industry. The story is that he learnt fine needlework from an expert embroiderer there, Mme Leroudier. In 1902 he published a paper describing a method of anastomosing arteries and veins, with which he had experimented successfully in dogs, and which is still in use …
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