Charles A. Lindbergh Typed Letter Signed. One page, 8.25" x 11", Switzerland, May 24, 1970. Four decades earlier, following his sister-in-law's diagnoses of a fatal heart condition, aviator Charles Lindbergh, then living in France, began studying the perfusion of organs outside of the human body with surgeon and Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Alexis Carrel. In the process, Lindbergh invented a perfusion pump, called the "Model T" pump, which aided in the process of heart surgery. In 1938, the two men published a book, The Culture of Organs, in which they described an artificial heart, decades before one was actually built.

In this letter, written to Dr. Charles T. Riall of the American Cyanamid Company, Lindbergh discusses Dr. Carrel, in part: "The needles you have that were used by Dr. Carrel in performing the first arteriovenous anastomosis for blood transfusion are certainly of great historical value. Since this transfusion took place many years before I first met Dr. Carrel (1929), I can not give you direct information in regard to them." He suggests that Dr. Riall contact Father Joseph T. Durkin of Georgetown University, "the custodian of the Carrel collection," or Dr. Theodore I. Malinin of the American Foundation for Biological Research "to supply you with part or all of the information you desire. . . . Father Durkin has written a book about Dr. Carrel, and made a thorough study of Carrel's like and activities. Dr. Malinin knows a great deal about early Carrel operations and techniques." Smoothed folds. Two small staple holes in the upper left corner. From the Collection of a Minnesota Gentleman.