Hamilton Naki & Christiaan Barnard

I found the obituary of surgical pioneer Hamilton Naki in the current issue of The
Economist fascinating and inspiring. Here is the story of a man who left
formal schooling at age 14 and yet, despite living in apartheid South Africa,
worked with Christiaan Barnard on the first successful heart transplant surgery.

This black man, with his steady, dexterous hands and razor-sharp mind, was simply too good at the delicate, bloody work of organ transplantation. The chief transplant surgeon, the young, handsome, famously temperamental Christiaan Barnard, had asked to have him on his team. So the hospital had agreed, saying, as Mr Naki remembered, “Look, we are allowing you to do this, but you must know that you are black and that’s the blood of the white. Nobody must know what you are doing.”

Mr Naki never learned the techniques formally; as he put it, “I stole with my eyes”. … Barnard admitted—though not until 2001, just before he died—that Mr Naki was probably technically better than he was, and certainly defter at stitching up afterwards.

The Economist (11 June 2005)

I looked up the obituary of Christiaan Barnard and found that in additon to being
a great surgeon, he was publicity-loving and a well-paid public speaker on the topic of
sex as the magic ingredient to longevity. Despite his quirks, Christiaan Barnard

“…campaigned
for black doctors to have equal pay with whites. He employed non-white nurses to treat white patients. He operated on blacks and whites according to their needs.”

The Economist (6 September 2001)

It is good to see the same full page celebrity obituary given to the self-taught and modest Hamilton Naki as to the flashy and famous Christiaan Barnard.