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Current and former researchers, patients, leadership and staff gathered to open the
NIH and Prosthetic Heart Valves exhibit July 11. The exhibit is located in the South Lobby
of the campus’ Clinical Center, building 10. Stories and history fill the display,
explaining the evolution of cardiac care and NIH’s role. What was early open-heart surgery
like? How have pacemakers and heart valve devices changed over the past 50 years? The
people who worked here at the time thought it was the absolute best place in the entire
world to do cardiovascular research, and the practice of the avant-garde cardiovascular
medicine and surgery. There wasn’t any place better. And it was really, really fabulous.
So everybody who was here at the time – most everybody – became a star. Filled with photos,
stories and medical research artifacts, it’s a lesson in history. However, for longtime
Clinical Center patient Walter Lingenfelter who had his first heart surgery at NIH in
the 1950s when he was 10 years old, it’s also a walk down memory lane. Actually, I
didn't know this myself. They told my parents that if he made it to age 18 that would be
good because all of this was pretty much brand new. When they went in I was more bit more
messed up that they had thought. Of course, they never told me how they felt. But I know
how I felt, and I wasn't going to settle for anything, but I was going to do the best that
I can and do what they tell me. And now I'm 63, and I'm still moving. The exhibit was
produced by the Office of NIH History’s DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Museum of Medical Research,
in collaboration with the FDA’s Office of History. From America's Clinical Research
Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER TV. In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Ellen Crown, at
the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health
and Human Services.