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/ 1 December 2007

The day medical history was rewritten

Nearly forty years ago, in the middle of the night at a Cape Town hospital, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard rewrote medical history when he carried out the first-ever heart transplant. The operation captivated the imagination of the world, catapulting Barnard and South Africa on to the world stage and leading to hundreds of similar operations around the globe.