Sewell's Pump | The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop
Photograph of a heart pump for by-passing the right heart of dogs, part of a thesis presented to the School of Medicine. Yale University, 1950 hy William H. Sewell, Jr., M.D.
When William H. Sewell, Jr., attended Yale Medical School in the later part of the 1940s, it had long been the policy of the school, at least since 1839, to require its students to prepare a dissertation prior to graduation. This requirement had been reaffirmed when the curriculum underwent a major revision between 1920-25 under the guidance of Dean Winternitz, and the "Yale" plan of medical education evolved. It emphasized that the required dissertation be an "original research." Nearly all students completed a research project during the four years of medical school, but a few who became deeply involved in their projects dropped out of medical school temporarily to complete them. Bill Sewell was one of these students; he had in mind to build an artificial heart.
I do not know when he first got the idea that he wanted to build an artificial heart. It is likely this was when he entered medical school and perceived a practical use for his mechanical skills. He told me that as a child he often played with an Erector set his father bought him. That mechanical things were of continuing interest to him, probably an inborn trait, is shown by the hobby he dedicated much of his spare time to later in life, the building and flying of model airplanes.
