Organ donation and transplantation: a brief history of technological and ethical developments

It was on a dreary night in November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet … by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and convulsive motion agitated its limbs (Shelley, 1969).1