(I) During each heartbeat, both sides of your heart relax
to draw in blood and then contract to squeeze blood
either to the lungs or the rest of the body. (II) Today,
heart transplants are quite routine and can give people
with serious heart disease a new lease on life. (III) This
operation was first pioneered in 1967 by South African
surgeon Christiaan Barnard. (IV) He took the heart from
a young woman who had just died in a car crash and
used it to replace the heart of a man in his 50s who was
dying from heart disease. (V) Unfortunately, the man
lived for just 18 days, but Dr. Barnard showed that a
heart transplant was possible.