What do President
Ronald Reagan ,
actress Elizabeth Taylor
and former New York mayor Ed
Koch have in common? Each was saved from
choking to death when a bystander performed the Heimlich maneuver. The inventor
of the procedure, Dr. Henry
J. Heimlich ,
describes how he developed the anti-choking procedure in his memoir, Heimlich’s Maneuvers: My Seventy Years of Lifesaving Innovation.
Heimlich says that a 1972 newspaper
article first sparked his interest in devising an intervention for saving the
lives of choking victims.
“What caught my eye,” he says, “was
the sixth leading cause of accidental death—it was choking on food or a foreign
object. Nearly four thousand people were dying from choking each year in this
country alone.”
No stranger to controversy, Heimlich
began performing experiments on anesthetized dogs by inserting an object into
the animal’s airway and trying various means of dislodging it. He discovered
that pushing in and up on the dog’s diaphragm created a burst of air that
expelled the foreign object and allowed the dog to breathe freely. He submitted
an article about his procedure to a medical journal and the rest is history.
The Heimlich maneuver is recognized throughout the world as a reliable method
for saving the life of a choking victim. He has been harshly criticized,
however, for his canine experimentation.
This anti-choking technique was not
the only medical intervention that Heimlich devised. In the early 1950’s he
invented a surgical procedure that restored the esophagus of individuals who
could not swallow because of scarring from the ingestion of caustic substances
such as drain cleaner or patients who had esophageal blockages for other
reasons. Next, in the mid-1960’s, came the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, a device
used after chest surgery to prevent lung collapse. The military latched on to
the valve for use in Viet Nam
and ordered thousands of them.
“All told,” says Heimlich in his
book, “since I invented the device, more than four million Heimlich chest drain
valves have saved or improved the lives of patients in hospitals, ambulances,
and palliative-care settings at the end of life.”
Heimlich received an almost fatal
blow to his choking maneuver in 1976 when the American Red Cross suddenly
disavowed its use as the preferred intervention in saving choking victims.
Instead, that organization promoted the use of back slaps as a first resort. If
the back slaps did not work, only then should the Heimlich maneuver be
employed. Heimlich became incensed and refused to allow the Red Cross to use
the term “Heimlich maneuver.” That organization changed Heimlich’s terminology
to “abdominal thrusts” and has never looked back. Later, the American Heart
Association also adopted the term “abdominal thrusts” and, today, it is mostly
journalists and mainstream media who call the procedure “Heimlich maneuver.”
Heimlich, now ninety-four years old,
makes it known throughout his book that he has enjoyed life as a celebrity. In
fact, his memoir opens with a two-page description and photos of his appearance
on the “Tonight” show with Johnny
Carson .
“I ask myself,” Heimlich writes,
“How in the world did I, a physician, wind up on Johnny Carson ? How is it that I invented a
lifesaving method that led to my becoming so well known?”
Heimlich served in the Navy for two
years during World War II. He was one of twelve Americans assigned to Camp Four
in Mongolia
where he provided medical care to American and Chinese soldiers as well as local
villagers. He fell in love with the Chinese people and vowed to go back after
the war ended.
Heimlich did, indeed, return to China
in the 1980’s to conduct experiments on HIV positive individuals by inoculating
them with malaria. He is convinced that malaria has the potential for curing
the AIDS virus as well as some types of cancer and Lyme disease. Heimlich has
been harshly criticized for these clinical trials and labeled a crackpot.
Public opinion, however, has never dissuaded Heimlich from doggedly pursuing
his controversial ideas.
More revealing than what Heimlich
includes in his memoir is what he leaves out. While he writes about his wife, Jane
Murray (heir to the Arthur
Murray dance dynasty), and three of his
children, he never mentions his son, Peter , with
whom he has been embroiled in public controversy for years. Peter
Heimlich has accused his father of stealing
the “Heimlich maneuver” from a colleague as well as faking his medical
credentials. Heimlich also does not disclose that he was fired from The Jewish
Hospital of Cincinnati in 1977, ending his career as a surgeon, nor does he
acknowledge his co-developer of the Heimlich maneuver, Dr.
Edward A. Patrick ,
who died in 2009.
Heimlich also fails to mention that his
proposed malariotherapy for curing AIDS has been castigated by the Centers for
Disease Control and other recognized medical authorities.
Throughout his book, Heimlich
cherry-picks the parts of his life that he wants to publicly reveal, making
sure that there are no pits left on the plate.
Published by Prometheus Books, Binding: PaperbackPages: 253, ISBN: 978-1-61614-849-2
Published by Prometheus Books, Binding: PaperbackPages: 253, ISBN: 978-1-61614-849-2
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