Heart-lung machine, 1948, Utrecht
On loan from the Utrecht University Museum

At the end of the Second World War the Utrecht professor of physiology, Jacob Jongbloed, experimented with the prototype of a heart-lung machine. Jongbloed was convinced that in the foreseeable future people with a heart problem could be helped by implanting an artificial heart. However, he never got any further than this table-sized model. It was made by a manufacturer specialising in the production of milking machines. This heart-lung machine was never used in an operation on human beings. It was used only for experiments with dogs. However, an operation on one dog required the blood of seven other dogs!