CARREL, ALEXIS. – Surgeon and biologist, born at Ste-Foy-les-Lyon (France) on 28 June 1873, died in Paris on 5 November 1944. He took degrees in science and medicine at the University of Lyon. In 1912 he entered the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in Nuova York, where he remained until his death, directing the department of experimental surgery.
In 1912 he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for his work on the suturing of blood vessels and on organ transplantation. He collaborated with C. A. Lindberg in research through which he constructed a heart with artificial circulation; he also collaborated with Lecompte du Noüy, who gave a mathematical basis to the results he had obtained concerning the speed of healing in relation to the size of the wound and the age of the subject. Among the numerous honorary distinctions awarded him for his extensive and important scientific production, he was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He deserves special mention because he modified and perfected the «in vitro» tissue culture discovered by Harrison, obtaining results of the greatest importance both for medicine and for biology, such as the survival of fibroblasts from the embryonic heart of a chicken for twenty-eight years.
Known throughout the world is his book: Man the Unknown (Nuova York 1935; Italian translation, Milan 1936), which presents his experiences and intuitions as a physician and as a man, for a better understanding both of nature and of human life and affairs. Yet it is not free from serious errors concerning God, the spiritual nature of the soul, and the true spiritual and supernatural values. Shortly before his death he also wrote The Prayer (Nuova York 1944; Italian translation, Brescia 1947), in which, while praising prayer as a beneficial and health-giving element, he makes serious errors concerning its nature. Recently there appeared posthumously: Le voyage de Lourdes, suivi de fragments de journal et de méditations (Paris 1949; Italian translation, Brescia 1949), and the following is about to appear: La conduite de la vie, a sequel to Man the Unknown. In these last two works one observes a more vital approach to the truths of the Faith and to the intervention of the supernatural, to the point that, a few weeks before his death, he said: «I want to believe and I believe everything that the Catholic Church wants us to believe; I have no difficulty in doing so, because in her Message I find nothing contrary to the facts established by science» (Le voyage de Lourdes..., III, cited edition).