Introduction
For many years ordinary events such as having dinner with family or a child playing with toys would be equal to a death sentence. It is funny how these beautiful events would turn tragic because of one individual being chocked by food or a child being chocked by a toy. Imagine having dinner or lunch with your family or friends and immediately one of them chocks and it means the end of the road for him or her. We can agree that dying from a chunk of meat is not one the most pleasant deaths. The relationship between chocking and death was tragic to the point that chocking was among the top three causes of accidental deaths before the early 1970s.
Henry Heimlich's Efforts
In fact, studies had indicated that more than 3,000 Americans before the 1970s died as a result of chocking. It took efforts of Henry Heimlich to end the crisis that was building around chocking. Heimlich was an American surgeon whose research and practice revolved around the treatment of trachoma and Gastric Tube esophagus replacement.
Research and Revelation
Heimlich, in 1972, read an article in the New York Times that explained how chocking had taken away the lives of many people in America and all over the world. Like everyone else, Heimlich was shocked by how chocking occurred during the ordinary day-to-day activities. Heimlich also found that chocking had taken lives of prominent people such as Joan Skake, Tommy Dorsey, and Claudius I, who was an emperor of Rome. The topic continued to catch Heimlich's attention because in the early 1950s he had conducted surgeries and research on swallowing problems.
Like any scientist would do, Heimlich started to research on the matter. Heimlich studied empirical studies on chocking and found that the prominent method of dealing with choking was hitting someone at the back. I am 100% sure that this is the most common method in many American households. After a series of research, Heimlich found that slapping someone at the back did more harm than good. In this case, hitting someone at the back forced the object that is chocking the victim to move downwards, and it clogged the airway which in turn resulted in death.
The Heimlich Maneuver is Born
However, the relationship between backslaps and downward movement of chocking objects gave Heimlich a revelation of what would become the best method for saving individuals who are choking. Heimlich realized that if deaths were caused by moving the chocking objects downwards, then the solution lied in pushing them upwards. As a result, Heimlich began laboratory research at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital. Heimlich used balloons to show how a massive flow of air could move a choking object upwards and save a life.
Heimlich then transferred his concepts to animal research and tried it in a dog. Heimlich put a tube in a dog's mouth and pressed his fist above the dog's belly button and pushed the diaphragm upwards. The pressure that Heimlich applied to the dog resulted in the tube moving out of the dog's mouth. Heimlich repeated the same technique, and it gave the same results. At that point, the Heimlich maneuver was born that we have all come to know.
Public Recognition and Adoption
The procedure was bought out in public in 1974. The Heimlich maneuver, in this case, involves pressing the victim's belly and pushing it in and above the navel to create a huge amount of airflow from the lungs to push choking objects out of the windpipe. Since its initiation in 1974, the maneuver has been adopted by rescuers such as the Red Cross. Although the name has since been changed to abdominal thrusts, the Heimlich maneuver remains a household name and an international procedure of saving choking victims. That is the brief history of the Heimlich maneuver.
