April 4 - Texas History

Speaker 1: This is today in Texas history. On this day, April fourth,

in nineteen sixty nine, doctor Denton Cooley implanted the first

complete artificial heart in a human being. The device, developed

at Cooley's Cullen Laboratories in Houston, kept the patient alive

for sixty four hours until a suitable heart donor was found.

The patient died thirty two hours after receiving a new heart,

but this experience proved the viability of the artificial heart

as a temporary measure. The first artificial heart is now

in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Because of Cooley's research,

heart transplantation is no longer considered an experimental procedure. I

bet you didn't not doubt that was today in Texas history.