Successful transplantation of human and cat corneal tissue into rabbit corneae.

IT is always regarded as axiomatic that there is no possibility of a corneal graft being successful unless the donor material comes from an animal of the same species (Nizetic, 1934; Duke-Elder, 1938; Lister, 1951; Avello, 1951; etc.), but this dogma is open to question. Ortin (1914, 1916, 1931) performed penetrating grafts on rabbits, using donor material from other species; in every case a permanent opacity resulted. He did not state, however, whether the operations had been technically successful and free from complications. For example, adherence of the iris to the graft would by itself have caused opacification of the graft apart from the question of tissue incompatibility between donor and host. Experimental lamellar heteroplasties do not appear to have attracted much attention. Von Walther (cited by Miihlbauer, 1840) made some experiments on animals and operated on a few clinical cases; these efforts were not successful and the report omits histological data and other important details. As no more satisfying reports could be found in the literature it was decided to attempt to fill in this gap in our knowledge.