1951-1954

Surgeon David Hume at Pent Bent Brigham in Boston performs series of kidney transplants, all of which led to patients’ deaths owing to rejection, which Peter Medewar would shortly explain (Craddock, 216). This followed Hume’s dialysis operation of 1946 in which he taped a human kidney to the top of patient’s arm, connecting it via vein and artery (214). Joseph Murray and his team, also at the Brigham, performed the first kidney transplant with identical twins, Richard and Ronald Herrick, on December 23, 1954; the recipient brother, Richard, lived eight more years before the transplanted kidney became infected. By 1966, 23 kidney transplants with identical twins had been performed (218-221).