Philip Blaiberg

Philip Blaiberg (24 May 1909 – 17 August 1969) was a South Africa dentist and the third person to receive a heart transplant. On 2 January 1968, in Cape Town, Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the third heart transplant in the world on the fifty-nine-year-old Blaiberg (Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz performed the world's second heart transplant, on a baby in the USA, only three days after Dr. Barnard performed the first). Blaiberg survived the operation, and continued with his life for nineteen months and fifteen days before dying from heart complications on 17 August 1969. The success of Blaiberg's heart transplant spiraled the progress made in regard to heart transplantation.

Blaiberg was born in the small town of Uniondale in the Cape Colony, later the Cape Province. After completing his dentistry studies in London, Blaiberg returned to Cape Town and opened up his dentistry practice. In World War II, Blaiberg joined the South African Army Medical Corps and served as the dental unit in Ethiopia and Italy.

At the age of forty-five, in 1954, Blaiberg suffered his first heart attack. He subsequently closed his dental practice, and retired to Cape Town. In March 1967, Blaiberg's heart failed, and it appeared that he was dying. The world's first human heart transplant operation was performed months later, on December 3, 1967. With the assistance of his brother, Marius, and thirty other people, Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the nine-hour operation on Louis Washkansky, a 55-year-old man suffering from diabetes and heart disease. With the transplanted heart from Denise Darvall, a victim of a road accident, Washkansky was able to survive the operation and lived for a period of eighteen days before dying of pneumonia. On 2 January 1968, Blaiberg became the second person to successfully undergo a heart transplant. Blaiberg received the heart from 24-year-old Clive Haupt, a coloured man who had collapsed on a Cape Town beach the day before. That the identity of the heart donor had been released led to much heated controversy in South Africa. In the times of the apartheid, there was heated debate about the racism that existed in the country. Some even went on to say:

...
Wikipedia