February 21: Kidney Experiment Proves Futile for Abortion Victim

Homemaker Lois Irvine, age 31, was in critical condition in Frankford Hospital in Philadelphia in February of 1951. Her kidneys began to fail due to sepsis so doctors tried an experiment. They  removed a kidney from the body of a 30-year-old truck driver who had been killed an hour earlier in a traffic crash. They placed the kidney on a clay filter inside a glass jar where it was bathed in a salt solution and kept at body temperature. They then flushed Lois's blood through it. In spite of this effort, Lois died on February 21. Doctors believe that the effort failed because too long a time had passed between the man's death and the removal of the kidney.

Lois left three children motherless.

Helen Castor, age 30, was arrested and charged with perpetrating an abortion that had caused Lois's decline and eventual death. She was released on $2,500 bail. The police also investigated Lois's husband, Richard; Mrs. Castor's husband, Vernon; and a woman named Dorothy Jaskolski.  The fatal abortion had been performed in Lois's home on February 3.

As an aside, it seems that the doctors did not get consent from the truck driver's family before removing his kidney, but his grandmother, who had adopted him after his mother's death, said, "Legally they had no right to do it, but if he was dead then I think it was alright."

Watch The Kidney in the Jar on YouTube.

Source:

• Death certificate
• "3 Are Arrested In Illegal Operation," The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 7, 1951
• "Woman Held After Mrs. Irvine's Death," York (PA) Dispatch, February 22, 1951
• "Woman Arrested in Illegal Operation," Lancaster (PA) Intelligencer Journal, February 24, 1951
• "Abortion Charged In Death of Woman," York (PA) Daily Record, February 24, 1951
• "Woman Blamed In Fatal Surgery," Philadelphia Inquirer, May 16, 1951