34 Years Ago In TIME

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Daren Fonda, Unmesh Kher, Ellin Martens and Sora Song

Denise Darvall, 25, had been killed in a car accident. But her heart would get a chance to live on in a history-making procedure. As Dr. CHRISTIAAN BARNARD performed the world's first successful heart transplant on a human, the world palpitated:

In painstaking sequence, Dr. Barnard stitched the donor heart in place. First the left auricle, then the right. He joined the stub of Denise's aorta to Louis Washkansky's, her pulmonary artery to his. Finally, the veins. Assistant surgeons removed the catheters from the implant as Barnard worked. Now, almost four hours after the first incision, history's first transplanted human heart was in place. But it had not been beating since Denise died. Would it work? Barnard stepped back and ordered electrodes placed on each side of the heart and the current (25 watt-seconds) applied. The heart leaped at the shock and began a swift beat. Dr. Barnard's heart leaped too. Through his mask, he exclaimed unprofessionally but pardonably, "Christ, it's going to work!"...The heart gradually slowed its beat to 100 per minute. (Surgeon Barnard's had been a frenetic 140 when he finished the operation.)

--TIME, Dec. 15, 1967