Henry Swan

https://www.jvascsurg.org/article/S0741-5214(97)70364-1/fulltext

When Dr. Henry Swan of Denver died July 13, 1996, Vascular and Cardiac Surgery lost another of the little band of Brothers who pioneered our specialty. The story and flavor of his life should be remembered by today's vascular surgeons who profit so immensely by what he left us as his inheritance. His remarkable contributions in exploring the use of hypothermia in permitting open heart operations often obscure his earlier contributions as a vascular surgeon. These comments will be directed primarily to those who specialize in vascular surgery and perhaps have foregotten Dr. Swan's contributions in their specialty. Dr. Swan was one of the original members of the Society for Vascular Surgery and the International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery. He served as Secretary of the Society for Vascular Surgery from 1956 to 1959.

Dr. Swan was born into a distinguished Denver family in 1913, grew up in that city, and spent his professional career in the Rocky Mountain region that he so loved. He was one of the few pupils who journeyed east from Colorado for his prep school training at Phillips Exeter Academy, where he graduated cum laude in 1931. He then entered Williams College, where he graduated 4 years later magna cum laude. His remarkable academic record involved a major in humanities, with only the bare minimum required for him to be admitted to medical school. Henry's family environment and his natural inquisitiveness set the stage for a life-long interest in literature, politics, history, music, and the humanities. Throughout his life, he had the voracious interest in every aspect of the world around him that characterized the Renaissance man—and that made him of such interest to others. Somehow this man could be immersed in the time-consuming intricacies of academic vascular and cardiac surgery, but still managed to remain sensitive and informed about the larger world in which he played such an important part.

Henry Swan was a tall, attractive, healthy young man who throughout his life was an athlete and an outdoorsman. While at Williams College he was captain of the varsity tennis team. His first serve—when it went in—was typically unreturnable and cowed his opponent for the far-less-awesome second serve. This was Henry's style.

Henry entered Harvard Medical School in the prestigious class of 1939, whose members all seemed destined to be important academic leaders throughout the country. Henry was of course a born surgeon, and was Junior Alpha Omega Alpha and valedictorian of his class. Many of his classmates also went into surgery, for these were the golden years of this specialty and Henry and his classmates were destined to become its leaders.

After graduation, Henry returned to Denver, taking a year (1939-40) in Pathology at the University of Colorado Medical School. He then returned to Boston and between 1942 and 1943 had his Residency in Surgery at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Children's Hospital, where he was the student and colleague of many of those who shared leadership in Surgery a few years later.

Given Henry's active philosophy of life, it was obvious that he would volunteer for the Army in World War II and would end up in a forward Surgical Unit during the fighting in Europe. He became Chief of a Surgical Team—why not, he had almost 2 years of surgical training—where he quickly won the admiration and friendship of those who shared these assignments. After his discharge from the Army, Henry returned to Denver and joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Medical School. The Chairman of the Department of Surgery—Dr. Jack Foster—was a community surgeon who spotted Dr. Swan's talents for leadership and groomed him as his successor. On July 1, 1950, Dr. Swan assumed the Chair of Surgery as the first full-time professor of Surgery in the school's history. He took over a little-known department, totally lacking in laboratory facilities or productivity, and with a total department budget that was less than the salary of a current chief resident in surgery. Thus started Dr. Swan's golden years. One of his first activities was to convert some storage space in the Medical School building into the Halsted Animal Research Laboratory, where he began studies in arterial reconstruction, storage, and grafting. His earliest animal work involved exploring methods for preserving allograft arteries, for these were days long before vascular prosthetics. In 1949, after laboratory testing of graft preservation in Ringer's lactate solution, he inserted an 8-cm segment of a homograft into the descending aorta of a young boy who had extensive poststenotic dilatation of a coarcted aorta. Previous animal studies had shown that grafts even this long seemed to survive, and this one did. The boy was cured, and Swan reported this in the Archives of Surgery in 1950.

Although hitherto unreported, some of his laboratory studies were failures. At one time some of us in the laboratory, in conjunction with a young cardiac surgeon from Baltimore who later took the Chair of Surgery in Pittsburgh, tried to adapt the freeze-dry technique to preserving Scotch whiskey in the hopes that we could lighten the weight of our backpacks on long mountain treks. The experiment was a failure, but Henry Swan had a number of suggestions as how we might have improved the technique.

The story of how Dr. Swan explored generalized body hypothermia to prolong the period of safe open heart operations has been told many times and will not be repeated. The white enamel bathtub that, when filled with ice water, Dr. Swan used for cooling the anesthetized patients before operation is in the Smithsonian Institution. Swan's technique permitted 3 to 6 minutes time within the open heart for repair of atrial septal defects and repair of pulmonary and aortic valvular stenosis. The time limitations and stress of performing these procedures on the cold patient before the day of defibrillation took its toll on all those, such as Dr. Swan, who pioneered these techniques.

Dr. Swan's leadership attracted visitors from all over the world to observe his laboratory results and operative techniques. A sleepy little medical school and almost unknown Department of Surgery suddenly became an international hub. It also drew faculty to Dr. Swan's department from all over America. We were few, worked endlessly, were paid a salary that would be spurned by today's interns, and were not allowed private patients—but what a joy it was to work in that exciting intellectual environment. To those of us who were Henry's friends, that was the real mark of his leadership that should be recognized by those who would be future surgical academic leaders.

The flavor of the man can be appreciated by knowing some of his nonprofessional accomplishments. He flew his own airplane not only all over America, but around the tip of South America. Residents and his faculty colleagues joined Henry in the right-hand seat and somehow overlooked the morbidity that this involved.

Other activities involved being a world-class fisherman, hunter, wine connoisseur, and gardener. A special breed of tomato is known in his name, and a superb cauliflower was developed by his adoring wife Geri, with Henry doing the digging and fertilizing.

Dr. Swan was Chairman of Surgery for 11 years before retiring. He continued to do research and published an erudite book on thermoregulation and bioenergetics.

He is survived by his second wife, Geri, who devoted many years of love and caring during Henry's long terminal illness. He also is survived by two daughters and a son, Henry III.

His memory is important to those who subsequently profited by his leadership and innovative skills in the University of Colorado Medical School Department of Surgery. It is on the shoulders of men like Dr. Swan that practicing vascular surgeons now stand. He is a part of our heritage. Perhaps each of us can profit by emulating his example.

https://snaccooperative.org/view/950122/138126

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.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33130980/henry-swan

Henry Swan II was born May 27, 1913 in Denver, Colorado, to Henry Swan, Sr. and Carla Denison Swan. Coming from two well-established families in Colorado, Swan never thought of becoming anything other than a doctor, eventually extending the five-generation legacy of physicians on his mother's side. After graduating cum laude from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1931, Swan attended Williams College.

While at Williams, Swan was a member of Phi Beta Kappa as well as the Gargoyle Society, and earned many other honors. His extracurricular interests ran from Sigma Phi fraternity to the Gulielmensian ( Williams College yearbook) Editorial Board, to the Student Activity Council and the Liberal Club. He also played on the Tennis Team for several years, where he had a very intimidating serve. He was one of the first students to complete a combined major of English and History, which then became a standard major at Williams College. He graduated magna cum laude, the valedictorian of the class of 1935.

Following his graduation from Williams, Swan attended Harvard Medical School as a member of the class of 1939­­: a class that was destined for greatness, graduating several leading professors and surgeons of the time. A classmate described Swan as "a winner among winners," who graduated top of his class once again. After a brief Pathology Residency at Colorado General Hospital, Swan returned to Boston as a Surgical Resident at the Children's Hospital and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1942-43.

Swan joined the Army in 1943, quickly becoming Chief of a surgical team. During his time with the army, he is credited with operating on more than 1600 men and saving the lives of many. While in the army, Swan learned to pilot airplanes, a skill he would later find to be a useful and enjoyable adventure. In 1946, he returned home to Colorado, where he took an Assistant Professorship at the University of Colorado Medical School. Within just four years, he was the chairman of the Surgery Department, and the first full- time professor.

One of his first acts as chair was to set up an animal research facility nearby, where he performed more than 400 experiments and surgeries on dogs before perfecting the method of cooling used for many years to perform open-heart surgeries on humans. By cooling the body, metabolism and blood flow are slowed, allowing the heart to stop for several minutes without any brain damage. This discovery allowed a surgeon only six minutes to perform surgery on a patient, a stressful and risky venture at best. Modern medical and technological advances now allow surgeons up to several hours to operate on a patient's heart. As a pioneer in open-heart surgery, the bathtub in which Swan cooled patients-up to ten degrees below normal temperature-is on display in the Smithsonian.

Swan is credited with bringing the Department of Surgery at the University of Colorado Medical School to life. During his 11-year tenure as chairman, he brought many world-class surgeons to the department, performed one of the first arterial grafts, and developed one of the first artery banks in the nation. He traveled the country and the world, demonstrating his technique, publishing more than 250 papers and articles, and exploring further advances in slowing metabolic functions. For many years, he sought out and researched lungfish from various exotic areas, in an attempt to find and isolate an anti-metabolic hormone he named "antabalone".

This sort of life proved stressful, however, and Swan retired from the University of Colorado Health services in the early 1960s, as he finalized his divorce, only to take up a position at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University where he taught and continued his research for many years. In 1974, he published the results of many years of research: Thermoregulation and Bioenergetics, a book on the chemistry of hibernation.

Swan was named the 1955 Outstanding American Physician of the Year by the International Society of Surgeons and became the first physician from Colorado to be appointed to the American Board of Surgery. His colleagues and students honored him by naming a visiting professorship after him at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, after he retired, and his alma mater, Williams College, granted him an honorary Doctor of Science Degree in 1959.

In addition to his spectacular surgical and academic career, Swan had a lively personality outside the office. Although he never had a private practice, he maintained an office where he read, reflected, and explored various ideas. A good friend fondly remembers interrupting Swan as he gazed out the window with a sextant, pondering the idea of sailing. He eventually fulfilled this dream, sailing his custom-made ship home from Spain along Columbus' route, after his second marriage. He was an avid sportsman and aviator, surviving three plane crashes. The worst of these, in Mexico, left him with a lasting limp after breaking both ankles and sustaining several other fractures. He lived on a farm in Colorado where he and his family raised lambs, pigs, and vegetables, and he was always ready to go hunting or fishing, or to cook up the results of those ventures.

Swan died at home in 1996, after a long illness. He left behind his wife, son, two daughters, five grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren."