Swan, Henry, 1913-1996

U.S. heart surgeon Henry Swan II was born on May 27, 1913 in Denver, Colorado, the son of railroad executive Henry Sr. and Carla Denison Swan. Dr. Swan made significant contributions to the development of open heart surgery techniques, particularly through his research in hypothermia and suspended circulation. In 1943, Swan joined the Army of the United States for two years and nine months, serving with the 4th and 5th Auxiliary Surgical Group in the European Theater. He operated on more than 1,600 wounded soldiers during World War II. It was during his military service that he learned to pilot airplanes, an interest he would continue to pursue for both work and pleasure. Swan acquired his own plane after the war and became well-known in the medical community for flying his team across the United States and as far as South America to demonstrate his surgical techniques. Swan returned to Colorado in 1946 and took an assistant professorship at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He quickly emerged as the key figure in reinvigorating the surgical program, becoming the first full-time chairman of the Department of Surgery in 1950 and holding that position (and a full professorship) for the next eleven years. As department chair, Swan was responsible for hiring many world-class surgeons, performing hundreds of surgeries (including the first successful closure of an atrial septal defect in 1953), and setting up one of the country's first artery banks. He also established an animal research facility known as the Halsted Laboratory to study ways of correcting congenital heart problems. Here he performed supercooling experiments and practice surgeries on more than 400 dogs before developing the pioneering technique of placing a patient in a bathtub full of ice water until the body cooled to ten degrees below normal. This cooling process slowed the patient's metabolism and blood flow until the heart stopped, allowing a surgeon six minutes to operate on the heart before oxygen deprivation caused irreparable brain damage. Swan became the world's first surgeon to perform a successful series of open heart surgeries; the bathtub in which Swan chilled his patients is now part of the Smithsonian Institution's collection. Elements of his hypothermia research continue in use even though the development of the heart-lung machine provides a safer method of performing open heart surgeries. For many years he also studied bears, hummingbirds, frogs, and lungfish in an attempt to identify and isolate the chemical agent allowing them to temporarily block their metabolism during hibernation. This long term animal research facilitated Swan's development of a doctoral program in surgery at the Colorado State University School of Veterinary Medicine. He taught and continued his research at that institution from 1963 until his retirement in 1982.