Henry Heimlich, the medical maverick who
came up with a maneuver credited with saving thousands of
choking victims but who damaged his standing as a proponent of
the curative powers of malaria, died on Saturday at the age of
96.
Heimlich, a doctor who developed a life-saving technique to
dislodge airway blockages, died at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati
of complications from a massive heart attack he suffered on
Monday, his family said in a statement.
A thoracic surgeon who often feuded with the established
medical community, Heimlich said the maneuver which was named
after him saved more than 100 000 lives. He claimed to have used
it himself last May on another resident of the Cincinnati
retirement home where he lived.
"It made me appreciate how wonderful it has been to be able
to save all those lives," he once told the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Heimlich came up with the ground-breaking technique in 1974
after reading about the high rate of deaths in restaurants that
first were attributed to heart attacks, but later found to have
been caused by diners choking on food.
An ordinary person could be a hero with "the Heimlich
Maneuver" - it requires no equipment, no great strength and only
minimal training.
The popular wisdom at the time called for repeatedly
slapping the back of person struggling with an obstruction of
the passage to the lungs.
But Heimlich, who was then at Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati,
believed the back slaps could force the blockage deeper. To
prove his method, he took anesthetized lab dogs, blocked their
windpipes with hunks of meat attached to strings in case of
emergency and developed a technique that would send his name
around the world.
The Heimlich Maneuver called for the rescuer to stand behind
the choking victim, apply the thumb-side of a fist to a spot
just under the diaphragm and between the lungs. By pushing
sharply on that spot, a surge of air from the lungs would then
expel the blockage.
"Dad was a hero to many people around the world for a simple
reason: He helped save untold numbers of lives through the
innovation of common-sense procedures and devices," his family
said in the statement. "But he was not only a physician and
medical inventor, he was also a humanitarian and a loving and
devoted son, husband, father and grandfather."
Heimlich wrote about his discovery for a medical journal and
it began to spread due to media coverage. A man in Washington
state who came to a neighbor's rescue was credited with being
the first person to use the Heimlich Maneuver shortly after
reading a newspaper story about it. The charismatic doctor also
busily promoted the technique, including appearances on
late-night television talk shows with Johnny Carson and David
Letterman.
Heimlich collected anecdotes about Heimlich rescues
throughout his life. Among them were the aide who saved Ronald
Reagan during his 1976 presidential campaign and Tom Brokaw
coming to the aid of fellow NBC newsman John Chancellor.
Actress Cher was saved by director Robert Altman and Clint
Eastwood once prevented a partygoer from choking. In 2015, a
13-year-old boy was able to clear a classmate's blockage after
learning the move watching the cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants."
'ONLY METHOD'
Some members of the medical community had been slow to
accept the Heimlich Maneuver, partly because there had been no
official human trials, but in 1976 the Red Cross included it in
guidelines for clearing obstructed air passages.
In 1984, Heimlich was given the prestigious Lasker Award for
public service. A year later C. Everett Koop, then the U.S.
surgeon general, said the Heimlich method should be "the only
method" used for choking victims.
In 1986, it was officially recommended as the primary
anti-choking technique by the Red Cross, although the
organization would reverse that decision in 2006, saying
"abdominal thrusts" should only be a secondary method.
As the Heimlich Maneuver became part of American culture,
its namesake sought more innovation. He thought his technique
should also be used to clear mucus from the lungs during an
asthma attack and was better than cardiopulmonary resuscitation
for drowning victims - claims that were dismissed by authorities
such as the Red Cross and the American Medical Association.
Heimlich damaged his credibility further by espousing
malaria therapy, saying the high fevers of malaria stimulated
the body's immune system enough to counter AIDS, cancer and Lyme
disease.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
discounted that theory, but under Heimlich's direction, human
malaria therapy trials were conducted in Mexico, China and
Africa because they would never have been permitted in the
United States.
"I don't follow all the rules if there's a better, faster
way to do it," he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1994
interview. "If your peers understand what you've done, you are
not being creative."
His fiercest critic turned out to be son Peter, who had once
played in a band called Choke and done the music for Heimlich's
promotional film. The son devoted himself to debunking
Heimlich's work - first in a pseudonymous blog - and denounced
him as the creator of "a remarkable unseen history of fraud."
Heimlich's work with malarial therapy to fight AIDS was
briefly a popular cause in the mid-1990s, especially in
Hollywood, where celebrities hosted fundraisers for his research
and donors included Jack Nicholson, Bob Hope and Ron Howard.
Dr. Edward Patrick, a longtime collaborator who died in
2009, issued a press release in 2003 saying he was the
co-developer of the Heimlich Maneuver.
Heimlich also was credited with inventing a valve that bears
his name and is used to prevent air from filling the chest
cavity in trauma cases.
Heimlich and Jane Murray, daughter of dance school magnate
Arthur Murray and a proponent of alternative medical methods,
were married from 1951 until her death in 2012. They had four
children.