Mystery Solved and a short history of Transplants

It's one of those things that happen when you are a transplant patient. I've been on for well almost 30 years, well just coming on 29) but one likes to make these things up a bit. Anyway, back in the days when they had started doing Kidney transplant it was pretty much a hit and miss affair, something that these days we don't hear about, why ? well Doctors are supposed to be perfect aren't they, they never make mistakes, well they do and sometimes well, they don't understand the mechanisms involved so yep, it's the old trial and error.
Come to to think of it, they had an a pretty good idea how that if you put a foreign body ie a kidney, the body will treat it as such and will try it's level best to get rid of it. The first problem they had obviously was how to get around this little annoying habit the body has to try and get rid of something that well, is needed to keep it alive, but no, the body doesn't think that way, it will go ahead and try and wipe the good functioning kidney to kingdom come.

So some of the steps through history of kidney transplantation.
The first Xenotransplant  one was done in 1905!! Sheesh that' over 100 yrs ago! a French doc tried to transplant a rabbits kidney to a 16yr old girl who had kidney failure. She survived 2 weeks. Not bad for starters
It went downhill from there, in 1906 another Xenotransplant  from Pig to Human was done by using the vains and arteries in the arms. This patient lasted 1hr.

This were looking bleak now... So in 1909 a German Doctor transplanted a kidney from a macaque onto the thigh of a woman. She dies 32 hours later.
A war stopped most research into transplantation, I assume making weapons was more fun as they made a lot of noise and well made the night a bit brighter..

In 1923, Another Xenotransplant was tried with a Lambs kidney to a human, well as with previous attempts this didn't last much longer

Now we fast forward to those bleak years of the, 30s, and 40s to get to the first Human to human transplant.
This was done in 1952 from a trafic warden to her son, the kidney as you would expect was rejected 22 days later