The 19th Century French Embroiderer Who Made Modern Organ Transplantation Possible

upstart writes:

An interesting history story about a French embroiderer who helped revolutionize surgery:

On June 25, 1894, the French President Marie Francois Sadi Carnot attended a banquet at the Chamber of Commerce in Lyon. [...] One man present, Sante Geronimo Caserio, [...] revealed a dagger, which he plunged deep into Carnot's back. [...]

The surgical trainee Alexis Carrel was, like his fellow countrymen, appalled by the assassination, but he directed his ire not towards things Italian, rather the impotence of his profession. Carrel believed that, if only Carnot's doctors had possessed the skill, they'd have been able to save the president's life.

[...] He soon found that, even with recent advances in surgery, the thread surgeons used was too thick for tiny blood vessels, which would easily tear. The needles were too bulky, too, [...] If he was going to attempt to sew vessels together, he would need better. With nothing very delicate available at surgical suppliers of the time, Carrel turned to Lyon's famous embroiderers. [...]

The woman he went to see was called Marie-Anne Leroudier, one of Lyon's finest embroiderers. Leroudier isn't always mentioned in Carrel's biographies. [...] But if you take the trouble to look up her work, it's unfathomably intricate. [...]

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.