Introduction: toward the impossible
Early transplantation
The eighteenth century
The reawakening
Clinical and academic transplantation in Paris
The beginning of organ transplantation
The "lost era" of transplantation immunology
Anarchy in the 1920s
Progress in the 1930s
Understanding the mechanism
Experimental organ transplantation
Transplantation tolerance and beyond
Hopes for radiation tolerance
The emergence of chemical immunosuppression
Support from hemodialysis and immunology in the 1960s
Progress in the mid-1960s
Brain death and the "year of the heart"
The plateau of the early 1970s
The arrival of cyclosporine
Waiting for the xenografts
Conclusion: lessons from the history of transplantation.