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Lindbergh refers to needles used by Dr. Carrel

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Historical Memorabilia Start Price:0.00 USD Estimated At:2,000.00 - 3,000.00 USD
Lindbergh refers to needles used by Dr. Carrel
Lindbergh refers to needles used by Dr. Carrel. Typed letter signed, 1 page, 11 x 8¼", Switzerland, May 24, 1970. To Dr. Charles T. Riall at American Cyanamid Co, referring to Lindbergh's association with Dr. Alexis Carrel (1873-1944), a French surgeon, biologist and eugenicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912, and whose vascular-suturing technique made open-heart surgery and other advances possible. Lindbergh became interested in this area because his sister-in-law had a damaged heart valve and he wanted to ensure her survival. Lindbergh worked with Carrel in the mid-1930s to create the "perfusion pump," which allowed living organs to exist outside of the body during surgery. The two co-authored a book, The Culture of Organs and were pictured with their pump on the June 13, 1938 cover of TIME magazine. Carrel's fascist and Nazi sympathies, as well as his anti-Semitism, are said to have influenced Lindbergh. Carrel was accused of implementing eugenic policies and of collaboration with Vichy France, but he died before he could stand trial.

Lindbergh writes, in part: "…the needles you have that were used by Dr. Carrel in performing the first arteriovenous anastomosis for blood transfusion are certainly of great historical value. Since this transfusion took place many years before I first met Dr. Carrel (1929)…I sugget…that you write to…Father Joseph T. Durkin, S.J., Georgetown University…[and] Dr. Theodore I. Malinin, American Foundation for Biological Research….Georgetown University is custodian of the Carrel collection….Shortly after the end of World-War II, Mme. Carrel and I packed in about fifty wooden boxes the records and documents that were in the (closed) Department of Experimental Surgery of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now the Rockefeller University)….Eventually, Mme. Carrel gave this material to Georgetown University….Father Durkin has written a book about Dr. Carrel….Dr. Malinin knows a great deal about early Carrel operations and techniques…."
Estimated Value $2,000 - 3,000.

Our item number 150264