Michael E. DeBakey and Denton A. Cooley (Part II)

Abstract

Thesaurus 38 is concerned with our medical students´ cultural education—the fundamental purpose of Thesauri editions; students eager to go deeper on the Baylor work on Assisted Circulation and Total Artificial Heart in the 60s may find the UM-Thesaurus VII(38) complete bibliography in the Section CV at www: fdliotta.org In short, I may say that the 37and 38 issues of the Thesaurus have to me an additional emotional charge, because I myself worked intensively in Houston with Mike and Denton in the 60s on the development of one of the most relevant cardiac surgical advances of the 20th Century: the development of artificial circulation in the therapy of refractory heart failure. And fairly, Thesauri 37 and 38 are dedicated to these two outstanding personalities, in fact two giants, in my personal view, Michael E. DeBakey and Denton A. Cooley. They touched the highest problems of the ‘Science of Life’, with their technical skills, with their continual strong advocacy to research in the cardiovascular field. In the next Thesaurus issue (number 39) we will consider the controversies about blood pump development at Baylor in the 60s and my historical encounter with Mike in Buenos Aires in April 1996.