title: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation: a historical perspective leading up to the end of the 19th century.
abstract: Social laws and religious beliefs throughout history underscore the leaps and bounds that the  science of resuscitation has achieved from ancient times until today. The effort to resuscitate  victims goes back to ancient history, where death was considered a special form of sleep or  an act of God. Biblical accounts of resuscitation attempts are numerous. Resuscitation in the  Middle Ages was forbidden, but later during Renaissance, any prohibition against performing  cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was challenged, which finally led to the Enlightenment,  where scholars attempted to scientifically solve the problem of sudden death. It was then that  the various components of CPR (ventilation, circulation, electricity, and organization of emergency  medical services) began to take shape. The 19th century gave way to hallmarks both in  the ventilatory support (intubation innovations and the artificial respirator) and the open-and  closed chest circulatory support. Meanwhile, novel defibrillation techniques had been employed  and ventricular fibrillation described. The groundbreaking discoveries of the 20th century finally  led to the scientific framework of CPR. In 1960, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was eventually  combined with chest compression and defibrillation to become CPR as we now know it. This  review presents the scientific milestones behind one of medicine's most widely used fields.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, University of Athens, Athens, Greece. ekmektzo@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Konstantinos A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Ekmektzoglou
authors.forename: Elizabeth O
authors.initials: EO
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Periklis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Syros
authors.forename: Athanasios
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chalkias
authors.forename: Lazaros
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kalambalikis
authors.forename: Theodoros
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xanthos
mesh_terms: D016887:Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation / Q000266:history*; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans