Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, often called Walt, was born in Minnesota. He followed in his father's footsteps, as he was also a doctor. He was an extremely well educated man, earning four degrees at the University of Minnesota. He began perfecting his surgical career at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. He tried out a new technique whereby a patient was hooked up to a donor patient to keep the heart pumping and oxygenated while undergoing surgery. He performed such a surgery on a child with a ventricular defect, which I found extremely interesting for a personal reason I will mention at the end of this review. He and his colleagues also did the first heart catheterization puncture. He also used the world's first external pacemaker. He was also a gifted teacher, instructing many students in cardiac surgery, and did try to keep up with all new information to hone his skills. He won several awards for his work in the cardiac surgery field. He died in 1999 at the age of 80.

I happened across this book and read it a while back. I have no idea why in the world I got so behind in my reviews and marking my things as read? Either way, here we are. I picked it up because I was interested in the history of open heart surgery. My mom is nurse, so I have always loved gross and morbid things, but the real interest was because my little cousin was born with a heart defect and has had several heart surgeries. I enjoyed learning about this man who pioneered so many procedures and to see how far this medical specialty has evolved today. This was a really interesting read. I hated that it didn't have pictures of the doctor, so I Googled him. When I did, I found out that he also had a brother who was a doctor. His brother was a transplant surgeon, and transplanted the first pancreas that was successful. If it said that in the book, I missed it, but it was neat to see how this family had so many medically keen minds. If you are interested in heart surgery for any reason, I would say give this a try.