The Heart of Cape Town Museum at the Groote Schuur Hospital tells the story of how Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplant.
The operating theatre at Groote Schuur Hospital
The operating theatre looks busy. White face masks and green gowns are everywhere, as the surgeon keeps a steady hand above his patient’s chest.
They’re all waxwork models. But nearly 60 years ago, the team in this very theatre was on its way to a place in the history books – and the patient was about to become the world’s first recipient of a transplanted heart.
Operations no longer take place in this theatre at Cape Town’s Groote Schuur Hospital any more – it is now part of a museum about one of the world’s great medical feats.
The world’s first heart transplant
The record books state that the first successful human heart transplant took place on December 3rd, 1967, with the recipient being Louis Washkansky and the chief surgeon being Christiaan Barnard.
But the museum at Groote Schuur goes beyond the dry facts to tell the story – both of the operation itself, and the global race to be first.
It wasn’t an unexpected breakthrough. Heart transplants had been performed on animals beforehand, while other organs had been transplanted in humans. Surgical teams in the United States and USSR were champing at the bit to try it, with Barnard regarded as something of a charismatic, playboy interloper. He was a flashily ambitious sort, who completed his study in two years rather than six, even while mowing lawns and washing cars to pay for it.
The politics of the first heart transplant
But there was a political element to the race too. This was apartheid South Africa, which was desperately keen to show the world it was not an underdeveloped backwater. And it was politics that thwarted an earlier attempt on November 22nd. It was vetoed by Groote Schuur’s chief cardiologist as the donor was mixed race – he didn’t want giving the heart to a white man to be seen as part of the apartheid system.
But in the end, international differences gave Barnard the head start. In the US, a heart had to have stopped beating for someone to be declared dead, whereas in South Africa it could be at the point of brain death.
This was the case with the eventual donor, Denise Darvall, who was hit by a car. Giving Washkansky her heart took four-and-a-half hours. He only lived for another 18 days afterwards – but the breakthrough had been made.
Christiaan Barnard’s fame
Afterwards, Barnard became an instant celebrity, with TV crews camped outside the hospital. He swore he wasn’t courting publicity, though – no photographs were taken of the operation, and the press were not tipped off in advance.
But it’s the publicity that brings perhaps the most interesting part of the museum. There are letters from around the world thanking Denise Darvall’s father for donating his daughter’s heart. There’s fanmail sent after Washkansky’s death urging Barnard not to give up. And there are newspaper clippings heralding a new medical era.
Now, the theatre looks stuffy, dated and old-fashioned. But now thousands of patients a year get the lifeline that the waxwork with the cut-open chest receives. Barnard’s brave new world is now routine.
Heart of Cape Town Museum entry prices
At the time of publication, tickets for the Heart of Cape Town Museum cost 400 rand for international visitors and 190 rand for South Africans. Advance bookings are advised.
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