129 years ago today, September 9, 1896 (August 3, 1896, the lunar calendar), humans performed the world's earliest cardiac surgery. On September 9, 1896, humans performed the world's earliest cardiac surgery. Dr. Louis Rehn of the Municipal Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany, was the first to perform cardiac suture surgery on patients. The patient was William Eustace, a 22-year-old gardening intern. He had a fight with a man passing by in the hotel and his chest was punctured. There was a 1.5-centimeter wound in the right ventricle that was bleeding non-stop. Dr. Renne used three sutures to close his wound and removed blood stains around the wound, allowing the patient to recover. In the next decade or so, Rennes performed a total of 124 cardiac surgeries, with a success rate of 40%. Before that, the mortality rate for people with heart injuries was almost 100%.