Abstract
It is well known that the tissues of an animal do not grow or grow hardly at all in an animal of another species. Nevertheless, I attempted to transplant to cats, blood vessels resected from dogs, with the aim of ascertaining whether the vessels in spite of the toxic action of the cat's blood on the dog's tissue, could take over the functions of the vessels removed.
The method consisted of removing a segment of the abdominal aorta of a cat, and of reestablishing the circulation in the lower part of the aorta by interposing a segment of the jugular or carotid of a dog and suturing it to the cut ends of the aorta.
Five similar experiments were performed. In three cases, lesions of one or two anastomoses, and thrombosis of the vessel, occurred two days, ten days and thirty-five days after the operation. However, the wall of the transplanted segment remained apparently normal. In the fourth case, the transplanted segment, extirpated and examined six days after the operation, appeared to be normal and perfectly united to the ends of the aorta. On the fifth animal, a laparotomy was performed forty-eight days after the transplantation. It was found that the pulsations were normal in the abdominal aorta and the segment of carotid. The location of the anastomoses was marked by a slight hardening of the arterial wall. No dilatation of the transplanted segment was observed. The animal was kept alive and is now, seventy-eight days after the operation, in excellent condition. The pulsations of the femoral arteries remained normal.
The experiments show merely that a segment of a dog carotid which had been transplanted in a cat could act as artery for seventy-eight days at least.
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