Heart surgery was not even attempted before the late 1800s-long after surgery on other human organs had been performed. Heart wounds were almost universally considered fatal. Lacking any effective treatment, most people with heart wounds simply died.

The medical community did not recognize the need for heart surgery, much less heart transplants, until surgeons developed the skills to perform heart surgery. A few doctors faced situations in which the only way to save a patient's life was to try something that had never been done before-surgery on a beating human heart. Those early heart surgeons were coura- geous people who risked failure and ridicule by taking a chance to help patients who tenaciously hung on to life. Such was the case with the first operation performed inside a human heart in Germany in 1896.

The Heart Kept Beating