American Decades
Gibbon, John H., Jr. 1903-1973
DEVELOPER OF THE FIRST PRACTICAL HEART-LUNG MACHINE
Stimulus to Discovery.
One day in 1930, while serving as a Harvard research fellow in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Gibbon watched a patient undergoing heart-lung surgery suffocate on his own blood. To help such patients, he and his wife experimented with several different types of machines, until in 1935 they successfully used a heart-lung device on a dog, maintaining its life for thirty-nine minutes. But they had trouble developing an artificial lung big enough for humans.
Research Support and Success.
In the late 1940s Gibbon became associated with the IBM Corporation, which provided engineers at the company's expense to aid him in the development of his oxygenator. Finally, in May 1953, Gibbon and F. F. Albritten, Jr., used the heart-lung machine during surgery to close a large opening in the heart wall of an eighteen-year-old girl,...
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1950's Medicine and Health
