Forty years ago this month, the world's first human-to-human heart transplant was performed. The operation was successful.  However, the patient died from complications.  This miracle took place not in America and not in Europe.  It was done in Cape Town, South Africa.

In this groundbreaking effort, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who prepared for this day by performing a number of experimental heart transplants involving dogs, led a 30-member surgical team in implanting the heart of a young woman into 53-year-old Louis Washkansky, a Cape Town grocer suffering from diabetes and incurable heart disease.

Washkansky received the heart of Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old bank clerk who was left brain-dead following an automobile accident the day before. She was removed from life support, and her father gave permission for her heart to be given to Washkansky.

The transplant, performed at Cape Town's Groote Schuur Hospital, was a success. Washkansky's body did not reject the heart, due in large part to the immunosuppressive drugs he received. But those drugs also weakened his immune system, and he contracted double pneumonia, which killed him 18 days after the transplant.

Barnard, who became an international celebrity as a result of the transplant, soldiered on. Over the next several years he performed additional heart transplants, with the survival times for his patients gradually improving. One patient, Dorothy Fisher, survived for 24 years after receiving a new heart in 1969.

Other surgeons, however, weren't as bullish on transplant surgery, because of the high risk of organ rejection by the recipient. It wasn't until cyclosporine came into widespread use in the early 1980s that an effective means of reducing that risk was found. After that, organ-transplant surgery expanded and has continued to grow ever since.