Alexis Carrel
From Freepedia
Alexis Carrel (June 28 1873 - November 5 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912. Born and educated in Lyon, France. He practiced in France and the United States (University of Chicago and the Rockefeller Institute). He developed new techniques in vascular sutures and was a pioneer in transplantology and thoracic surgery. He was a member of learned societies in the United States of America, Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece as well as he was honoured by honorary doctorates of the Universities of Belfast, Princeton, California and New York, and Brown and Columbia Universities.
He co-authored a book with Charles Lindbergh,The Culture of Organs.
On January 17, 1912 he placed a part of chicken's embryo heart in fresh nutrient medium in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his design. Every forty-eight hours the tissue doubled in size and was transferred to a new flask. The tissue was still growing 20 years later, longer than life of the chicken itself. During the First World War, Carrel and the English chemist, Henry Drysdale Dakin, developed the Carrel-Dakin method of wound treatments, which prior to the development of wide spread antibiotics, was responsible for saving many lives. For this, Carrel was awarded the Légion d'honneur.
Later in life, Carrel published a best-selling book titled Man The Unknown theorizing that the whole of mankind could better itself by following the guide of a restricted number of intellectual aristocrats, and by implementing a regime of selective reproduction as in vogue at the time in the field of eugenics. He went so far as to recommend gas chambers to 'dispose' of 'inappropriate individuals', especially praising Hitler's efforts in eliminating weak-minded, alienated and criminals in the 1936's German introduction of his book.
Carrel's motivations to spend his final years in Nazi-occupied France as Director of the Foundation for the Study of Human Problems in Paris are open to speculation.
