Tissue Transplantation

The transplantation of tissues from one site to another has been the subject of surgical endeavour for many centuries. Simple flap procedures for the repair of defects in the skin of the nose, mouth and cars were known to the Greeks and Romans of the first century A.D., and a form of rhinoplasty was carried out by Indian surgeons, using local flaps, more than two thousand years ago. A more sophisticated technique of rhinoplasty, involving the transfer of a pedicled skin flap from the arm, was used by Tagliacozzi in the fourteenth century. Powerful opposition to such interference in the works of the Almighty came from the Ecclesiastical authorities, and not only was Tagliacozzi discredited, but further progress in this field was firmly suppressed until the eighteenth century.In 1785, in Edinburgh, a series of experiments of some interest were carried out by a certain Mr. Fife and other members of the Royal Medical Society, and their work is recorded in the Society’s Experimental Committee Records for that year. They were interested in the possibility of blood transfusion, and used as their experimental subjects pairs of calves, one of each pair being bled via the carotid artery into a jugular vein of the other. In one instance they used as a conduit a pair of ivory cannulae connected by a piece of intestine which they had previously removed from a cat, and on other occasions they used simple metallic tubes