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"Nobel Prize in Medicine" Alexis Carrel Hand Signed Album Page Todd Mueller COA
$ 73.91
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Up for auction the"Nobel Prize in Medicine" Alexis Carrel Hand Signed Album Page.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-4481E
Alexis Carrel
(French:
[alɛksi kaʁɛl]
; 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a
French
surgeon and biologist who was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
in 1912 for pioneering vascular
suturing
techniques. He invented the first
perfusion pump
with
Charles A. Lindbergh
opening the way to
organ transplantation
. His positive description of an allegedly miraculous healing he witnessed during a pilgrimage earned him scorn of some of his colleagues. This prompted him to relocate to the United States, where he lived most of his life. He had a leading role in implementing
eugenic
policies in
Vichy France
.
A
Nobel Prize
laureate in 1912, Alexis Carrel was also elected twice, in 1924 and 1927, as an honorary member of the
Academy of Sciences of the USSR
. Born in
Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon
,
Rhône
, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family and was educated by
Jesuits
, though he had become an agnostic by the time he became a university student.
[
He was a pioneer in
transplantology
and
thoracic surgery
. Alexis Carrel was also a member of
learned societies
in the U.S., Spain, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Vatican City, Germany, Italy and Greece and received honorary doctorates from
Queen's University of Belfast
,
Princeton University
, California, New York,
Brown University
and
Columbia University
. In 1902, he was claimed to have witnessed the miraculous cure of Marie Bailly at
Lourdes
, made famous in part because she named Carrel as a witness of her cure. After the notoriety surrounding the event, Carrel could not obtain a hospital appointment because of the pervasive anticlericalism in the French university system at the time. In 1903 he emigrated to Montreal, Canada, but soon relocated to Chicago, Illinois, to work for Hull Laboratory. While there he collaborated with American physician
Charles Claude Guthrie
in work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs as well as the
head
, and Carrel was awarded the 1912
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
for these efforts.
In 1906 he joined the newly formed
Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research
in New York where he spent the rest of his career. There he did significant work on tissue cultures with pathologist
Montrose Thomas Burrows
. In the 1930s, Carrel and
Charles Lindbergh
became close friends not only because of the years they worked together but also because they shared personal, political, and social views. Lindbergh initially sought out Carrel to see if his sister-in-law's heart, damaged by
rheumatic fever
, could be repaired. When Lindbergh saw the crudeness of Carrel's machinery, he offered to build new equipment for the scientist. Eventually they built the first perfusion pump, an invention instrumental to the development of organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Lindbergh considered Carrel his closest friend, and said he would preserve and promote Carrel's ideals after his death.
Due to his close proximity with
Jacques Doriot
's fascist
Parti Populaire Français
(PPF) during the 1930s and his role in implementing eugenics policies during Vichy France, he was accused after the Liberation of collaboration, but died before the trial. In his later life he returned to his Catholic roots. In 1939 he met with
Trappist monk
Alexis Presse on a recommendation. Although Carrel was skeptical about meeting with a priest, Presse ended up having a profound influence on the rest of Carrel's life. In 1942, he said "I believe in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in Revelation and in all the Catholic Church teaches." He summoned Presse to administer the Catholic
Sacraments
on his death bed in November 1944.
For much of his life, Carrel and his wife spent their summers on the
Île Saint-Gildas
[
fr
], which they owned. After he and Lindbergh became close friends, Carrel persuaded him to also buy a neighboring island, the
Ile Illiec
, where the Lindberghs often resided in the late 1930s.