NEWS
Today, 50 years after the first heart transplant, 3,500 such operations take place every year
PIONEER TRANSPLANT SURGEON RECEIVED HEALING FOR ARTHRITIS Absent treatment was sought from Harry Edwards by friends of Prof Christiaan Barnard
THE HALF-CENTURY anniversary of the first heart transplant operation, carried out in South Africa by Professor Christiaan Barnard, has been commemorated in many countries with TV and other media coverage reflecting on the importance of the pioneering medical procedure. Today, 50 years later, heart transplants are almost routine so long as a suitable donor heart can be found, with around 3,500 operations taking place each year of which more than half occur in the United States and an average of 200 in Britain. What is not widely known, however, is that the great cardiac surgeon successfully received spiritual healing for incurable arthritis in his hands – a condition that would have seriously limited his surgical skills. Prof Barnard was head of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, when shortly after midnight on 3 December 1967 he and his colleagues began an operation that captured world headlines.
Just before 6am, the donor heart in the chest of grocer Louis Washkansky was electrically shocked into action. The patient regained consciousness and was able to speak with his wife and reporters, but lived for only 18 days having contracted pneumonia because of a weakened immune system. A year after that historic advance in medicine, Barnard’s friends sought absent healing for the surgeon from Harry Edwards, who was Britain’s most famous healer at that time. Edwards never revealed the names of his patients but during a visit to his healing sanctuary at Shere, Surrey, a reporter from the local newspaper noticed a photograph of the heart surgeon on which was a
Prof Christiaan Barnard in 1969 PSYCHIC NEWS | JANUARY 2018
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