The modern age of transplants began in the early 1900s, but at first there were very few successes. In 1905, Eduard Zirm (1863-1944), an Austrian physician, devised corneal transplants using corneas from cadavers, in the first successful transfer of an actively functioning body part. Zirm;s success was with a farm laborer whose sight had been destroyed by exposure to a chemical. Zirm was aware that an 11-year-old boy had just died after an accident, so he retrieved the boy;s corneas and transferred them to the farmworker. Zirm succeeded with only one of the two corneas transplanted, but the worker was able to see well enough to go back to work doing light farm duties. The method he created at the time forms the basis of the procedure used today.

In the late 19th century, physicians began trying to transplant skin. People were frequently hurt in fire-related accidents, and physicians tried to replace badly burned skin with patches from cadavers. In 1901, Karl Landsteiner had discovered that not all blood is the same; that blood must be categorized by type, so physicians worked to match blood types when grafting skin, but the host body frequently rejected the tissue. Doctors noted that if a second skin graft from the same donor was attempted, that graft was rejected even more quickly. Based on this finding, physicians were beginning to understand that the patient;s body built up an immunity if similar tissue had been previously introduced. . .

When Dr. Peter Medawar (1915-87) and Dr. Rupert Billingham (1921-2002) experimented with animals and skin grafting, they determined that if mice were inoculated at birth or even in utero, they could acclimate foreign tissue, and could tolerate grafting when they grew up. This provided proof that rejection of foreign organs could be overcome. Peter Medawar went on to win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1960.

Locating organs was a constant problem, and finally the United States created a way to make it easier to find and get organs. In 1968, the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA) established a uniform donor card as a legal document for anyone 18 years of age or older to legally donate his or her organs upon death. In 1984, the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) established a nationwide computer registry operated by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). It also authorized financial support for organ procurement organizations (OPOs) and prohibits buying or selling of organs in the United States. . .

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