Highlights of the History of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation

Highlights of the History of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)

1740 The Paris Academy of Sciences officially recommended mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for drowning victims.

1767 The Society for the Recovery of Drowned Persons became the first organized effort to deal with sudden and unexpected death.

1891 Dr. Friedrich Maass performed the first equivocally documented chest compression in humans.

1903 Dr. George Crile reported the first successful use of external chest compressions in human resuscitation.

1904 The first American case of closed-chest cardiac massage was performed by Dr. George Crile.

1954 James Elam was the first to prove that expired air was sufficient to maintain adequate oxygenation.

1956 Peter Safar and James Elam invented mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

1957 The United States military adopted the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation method to revive unresponsive victims.

1960 Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was developed. The American Heart Association started a program to acquaint physicians with close-chest cardiac resuscitation and became the forerunner of CPR training for the general public.

1963 Cardiologist Leonard Scherlis started the American Heart Association's CPR Committee, and the same year, the American Heart Association formally endorsed CPR.

1966 The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences convened an ad hoc conference on cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The conference was the direct result of requests from the American National Red Cross and other agencies to establish standardized training and performance standards for CPR.

1972 Leonard Cobb held the world's first mass citizen training in CPR in Seattle, Washington called Medic 2. He helped train over 100,000 people the first two years of the programs.

1981 A program to provide telephone instructions in CPR began in King County, Washington. The program used emergency dispatchers to give instant directions while the fire department and EMT personnel were en route to the scene. Dispatcher-assisted CPR is now standard care for dispatcher centers throughout the United States.

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