Henry Heimlich—Heimlich Maneuver

Abstract

A postage stamp issued by Uganda in 1990 shows Mickey Mouse performing the Heimlich maneuver (manual thrust) on Donald Duck, who is choking on food. In the early 1970s, the American surgeon Henry Jay Heimlich observed that food and other objects that caused choking were not freed by the recommended technique of delivering sharp blows to the back. As an alternative, in 1974 he devised a method called the “Heimlich maneuver,” by which air expelled from the victim's lungs propels food or other material from the throat. In the Heimlich maneuver, the rescuer wraps his arm around the choking victim's waist from behind, makes a fist with one hand and holds the fist with the other hand between the naval and the rib cage, and presses forcefully into the victim's diaphragm to expel the food. Heimlich was born on February 3, 1920, in Wilmington, Del. He received a BA degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, in 1941 and an MD degree in 1943. His internship at Boston City Hospital was interrupted in 1944 by service in the US Navy during World War II (1939-1945). He served as a surgeon with the Chinese guerrillas in the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia, service that was recognized and honored by the Chinese Ministry of Health in 1984. After the war, Heimlich served as a resident in thoracic surgery in several hospitals in the New York City area: Veterans Administration Hospital in The Bronx in 1946-1947, Mount Sinai Hospital in 1947-1948, Bellevue Hospital in 1948-1949, and Triboro Hospital (Jamaica, Queens) in 1949-1950. From 1950 to 1969, Heimlich was attending surgeon and director at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in New York City. In 1969, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he served as director of surgery at Jewish Hospital until 1977. In 1974, he tested his manual thrust theory on laboratory dogs. He left Hospital in 1977 to become professor of advanced clinical sciences of Xavier University in Cincinnati and to found the Heimlich Institute, where he served as president from 1977 to 1989. Heimlich is the author of Postoperative Care in Thoracic Surgery (1962) and coauthor of Surgery of the Stomach, Duodenum, and Diaphragm: Questions and Answers (1967). He has contributed many chapters to various books on surgery and has written numerous articles for medical journals. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and a member of many scientific and medical societies. Among the honors he has received are honorary doctor of science degrees from Wilmington College (Del) in 1981, Adelphi University (NY) in 1982, Rider College (NJ) in 1983, and Alfred University (NY) in 1993. Besides being known for the Heimlich maneuver, Heimlich is credited with developing reversed gastric tube esophagoplasty for the replacement of the esophagus, developing a device for life-saving chest surgery, inventing a chest drain valve (Heimlich valve) for patients with chronic lung disease, and providing a method for enabling stroke patients to relearn the process of swallowing.