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Dr. Henry Jay Heimlich (born Henry J. Heimlich; February 3, 1920) is an American physician who has received credit as the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver. Heimlich also advocates the use of malaria to treat HIV.

Personal life

Heimlich, born in Wilmington, Delaware, to Philip and Mary (Epstein) Heimlich, graduated from New Rochelle High School (NY) in 1937 and from Cornell University (where he served as drum major of the Cornell Big Red Marching Band) with a B.A. in 1941. He received his M.D. from the Weill Cornell Medical College in 1943. On June 4, 1951, Heimlich married Jane Murray, daughter of ballroom-dancing entrepreneur Arthur Murray. Heimlich's wife co-authored a book on homeopathy and herself wrote What Your Doctor Won't Tell You, which advocated chelation therapy and other alternative therapies.

The Heimlichs have four children.

Heimlich is the uncle of Anson Williams, who is known for his portrayal as Warren "Potsie" Weber on the 70s hit TV show Happy Days.

The Heimlich maneuver

Heimlich first published his views about the maneuver in a June 1974 article in Emergency Medicine entitled, "Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary". On June 19, 1974, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that retired restaurant-owner Isaac Piha used the procedure to rescue a choking victim, Irene Bogachus, in Bellevue, Washington. It was the first reported account of the use of the method, which would later be known as the Heimlich maneuver.

In an August 1974 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), it was reported that it saved so many lives in 2 months, that they named the method, the Heimlich maneuver.

In Public Health Reports, on September 30, 1985, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop endorsed the Heimlich manuever, not as the preferred, but as the only method that should be used for the treatment of choking from foreign body airway obstruction.

Dr. Koop also urged the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association to teach only the Heimlich Manuever in their first aid classes. Dr. Koop urged both organizations to withdraw from circulation manuals, posters and other materials that recommend treating choking victims with back slaps and blows to the chest.

"More than 3,000 people die from choking in the United States each year," Dr. Koop said. "Most adults choke while they are eating. Meat is the usual culprit, but other foods and objects can also cause choking, especially in young children."

For years, medical opinion differed on the best way, or ways, of dislodging an object from the throat of a choking victim. Sharp blows to the back, finger sweeps of the throat and manual thrusts to the chest were methods often recommended.

The American Red Cross and the American Heart Association concluded during a July 11-13 conference held to establish first aid standards for both organizations that methods other than the Heimlich Manuever can be dangerous and that only the Heimlich Manuever should be used to treat a choking victim.

"Millions of Americans have been taught to treat persons who are choking with back blows, chest thrusts and abdominal thrusts," Dr. Koop said. "Now, they must be advised . . . and I ask for the participation of the Red Cross, the American Heart Association and public health authorities everywhere . . . that these methods are hazardous, even lethal."

A back slap, the surgeon general said, can drive a foreign object even deeper into the throat. Chest and abdominal thrusts, because they refer to blows to unspecified locations on the body, have resulted in cracked ribs and damaged spleens and livers, among other injuries.

"The best rescue technique in any choking situation," Dr. Koop said, "is the Heimlich Manuever."

The recommended technique, devised in the early 1970s by Henry J. Heimlich, M.D., now president of the Heimlich Institute at Xavier University, depends for its success on the fact that a choking victim's lungs have a large volume of air in them even if the person was exhaling when the choking began. If a rescuer presses sharply and repeatedly on the victim's abdomen, with one balled fist wrapped in the opposite hand, at a point just above the navel, but below the rib cage and the diaphragm, that reservoir of air is expelled up the airway with a great deal of force, thus dislodging the obstruction from the victim's throat.

"The Heimlich Manuever is safe, effective and easily mastered by the average person," Dr. Koop said. "It can be performed on standing or seated victims and on persons who have fallen to the floor. It can be performed on children and even on one's self."

Dr. Koop suggested that persons who wish to learn when and how to perform the Heimlich Manuever contact their local Red Cross or Heart Association chapter for expert instruction.

At the same time, he cautioned that the best way to deal with obstruction of the airway is to prevent it. He cited the following advice from the American Red Cross: cut food into small pieces and chew slowly and thoroughly, especially if you wear dentures; don't laugh and talk while chewing and swallowing; avoid excessive intake of alcohol before and during meals; keep children from walking, running or playing while they have food in their mouths; and keep small objects, such as marbles, beads and thumbtacks, out of the reach of infants and small children.

According to BBC News (9 March, 2003), since the technique was introduced in 1974 it has saved more than 100,000 US lives, including those of Cher, former President Ronald Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Carrie Fisher and Jack Lemmon.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO DR. HENRY J. HEIMLICH’S LIFE IN MEDICINE

As with millions of people the world over, you may know Dr. Maneuver; as the man who researched, developed and launched what is probably the most famous and widely used medical breakthrough ever devised, the Heimlich Maneuver. It’s so widely used, in fact, and has saved so many people all over the world, that it may have saved you – or may yet save you or someone in your family or a friend – from sudden death by choking on food, or by drowning or even from death during a severe asthma attack.

Dr. Heimlich is hugely gratified about all of that -- not only that his name is so widely known, but that it is associated with such an important life-saving procedure. What most people don’t realize, however, is that after some sixty years’ hands-on work in thoracic surgery, all in all he has devised and developed six medical breakthroughs. Devices, surgeries and procedures that by now, like the Maneuver, have saved or transformed the lives of millions of men, women and children in every corner of our world – more every day, and more still to come.

The odd thing is that he has never consciously gone about searching for medical problems to solve. It’s always been more the other way around. Some conditions that affect large numbers of people in some serious way seem to come looking for him; to happen upon him.

That’s how it was with the Heimlich Maneuver itself, for example. Reading the newspaper – a daily habit -- he noticed occasional articles that focused on people who had died in a matter of minutes because food caught in their throats had suddenly blocked their breathing; and except for back-slaps, which were proven to lodge the food more tightly, causing death, no one knew how to help. Then he read that choking was among the top ten causes of death in the United States. As a thoracic surgeon, the general solution seemed obvious to him: Use air trapped in the lungs as a kind of natural bellows to clear the airway. At the same time, though, it was also clear that, because a choking victim is only moments from death by asphyxiation, the solution would have to be standardized, quick, reliable and simple enough for anyone to use – an “anyone-can-do-it-on-the-spot” solution. And because choking can happen to anyone, at any place, at any time, everyone would have to know how to use it. Even the quick-witted four-year-old boy who learned the Maneuver from his firefighter father and some time later saved his two-year-old-sister from choking on her food. The problem itself was simple to state; but devising truly workable solutions to all the layers and facets of the problem wasn’t so simple.

Or take the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, also still saving so many lives all around the world half a century after he developed it. One day, lecturing a group of doctors about chest surgery, he was explaining the use of a complicated, temperamental suction contraption used after chest surgery. It was attached to a tube inserted into the chest to prevent the lungs from collapsing under the pressure of outside air. But it also kept the patient tied down in bed for three weeks. “It works like a valve,” he told them. Later, thinking about his own words, he thought, “Why not a valve?” The Heimlich Chest Drain Valve remains his practical, enduring, working answer to the problem. Again, as so often in his career, the solution was simple, and so effective that post-op patients now can get up and walk around immediately -- and go home sooner. The Valve is so simple and so practical, in fact, that during the Vietnam War thousands of soldiers on both sides, shot in the chest in battle, were saved by their buddies who were able to use it on the spot. In just one instance, thirty-four men were shot in the chest on Vietnam’s Hill 881, and thirty-two got off the Hill alive. For the first time in history, a soldier shot in the chest in combat, with only his buddies to help him, had a good chance of survival. Still today, every year and all over the world, some 130,000 or so of these cheap little valves are saving the lives of civilians as well as military personnel from dying of severe chest trauma or of being tied down in bed for weeks after chest surgery.

Dr. Heimlich states: “In briefest outline, such were the beginnings of just a couple of my medical innovations. But there’s another thing that has played an invaluable part in my professional life. Since I was a youngster, I have always known that it’s fine to see a problem, and even to have what seems the perfect idea for the perfect solution. But the payload – the benefit for everyone – lies in what happens next. The ‘great idea,’ however brilliant, isn’t nearly enough by itself. For me, the essential part of the whole process has always been the follow-through. That is, taking that great idea though all the complications and objections that always arise, and so bring it to its practical, useful application.”

Make no mistake, though. The stories behind these medical breakthroughs are far more than a collection of aha moments and lab experiments and ground-breaking surgeries. Of course, they do involve inventing devices and developing surgical procedures. But they are gratifying to share, even as they were gratifying for him to live, mostly because each one is intimately entwined with saving real people. Some had been suffering for years with tremendously debilitating problems. The inability to swallow, for example – a condition that, because of the way they must feed themselves, makes it impossible for these victims to share meals with anyone, and so isolates them from normal life even with family and close friends. That was solved by the Heimlich Operation – creating a new esophagus from a portion of the stomach. Or the inability to get air deeply into the lungs, a condition that can tether people day and night to a big, unwieldy machine that doesn’t even get the job done. The first he was able to solve by developing an operation that is now the international standard. The second, by developing a portable device, the Heimlich MicroTrach, that frees patients from actual physical bondage to their own illness by delivering oxygen directly into the lungs, not into the nose. But above all, and whatever the medical problem, each breakthrough has been an important part of the special gift of transforming so many individual lives for the better – including his own.

Dr. Heimlich says: “At the same time, I’ve learned a different kind of lesson. I’ve learned that seminal ideas and effective follow-through don’t always make for smooth sailing. As many of you may already know, my life in medicine hasn’t been an unobstructed, rosy path of discoveries and breakthroughs, with no obstacles, no critics, no setbacks. That too is part of my story; part of the drama and the spice of my life. I never expected, for example, that the Heimlich Maneuver, of all things, with its decades-long and super-abundant record of life-saving success, would get me into trouble with one of our most storied philanthropic organizations. Nor had it ever occurred to me that a single highly placed United States Government official would for a moment stand in the way of a peer-reviewed cure for AIDS that makes use of a safe, standardized, affordable, Nobel-honored medical procedure, in use for nearly six decades, that actually cured an earlier and equally deadly pandemic.” As an old joke says, “Imagine my surprise!”

The Belgian Nobel Laureate Maurice Maeterlink may have had such difficulties in mind when he wrote, “At every crossway on the road to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past” In the course of his work, Dr. Heimlich says: “ I have come to know a few of these guards. You will meet some of them in my new book, “BREAKTHROUGHS and TRANSFORMATIONS”. My best and truest answer to them has always been the lives saved or transformed by the advances they criticize with abandon, and with dangerous consequences for people in serious difficulty.”

Dr. Heimlich closes with: “I’ve been told that hockey great Wayne Gretsky has said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” Well, I’m still at it. Still taking my shots at the status quo. That is the motive, the fruit and the lesson of my work. That is part and parcel of the life and the stories I am eager to share with you in these pages.”

LILA KARPF (signed)

Heimlich valve

In 1963, Heimlich introduced a chest drainage flutter valve (also called the Heimlich valve). He claims his inspiration came from seeing a Chinese soldier die from a bullet wound to the chest during World War II. The design of the valve allows air and blood to drain from a collapsed lung.

Malariotherapy

From the early 1980s, Heimlich advocated malariotherapy, the deliberate infection of a person with malaria in order to treat ailments such as cancer, Lyme disease and (more recently) HIV. As of 2009 the treatments have proven unsuccessful, and have attracted criticism as both scientifically unsound and dangerous. The United States Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have rejected malariotherapy and, along with health professionals and advocates for human rights, consider the practice "atrocious". Sources have disclosed that the Heimlich Institute, a subsidiary of Deaconess Associations of Cincinnati, is conducting malariotherapy trials in Ethiopia, though the Ethiopian Ministry of Health was unaware of any such trials. Reportedly the trials were supervised by Mekbib Wondewassen, an Ethiopian immigrant who works as a car rental agent in the San Francisco area. Heimlich claims that his initial trials with seven subjects produced positive results, but he has refused to provide details. The experiments have no institutional review board oversight.

Studies in Africa, where both HIV and malaria occur commonly, indicate that malaria/HIV co-infection increases viral load and that malaria could increase the rate of spread of HIV as well as accelerate disease progression. Based on such studies, Paul Farmer at Harvard Medical School described the idea of treating HIV with malaria by stating “it seems improbable. The places where malaria takes its biggest toll are precisely those in which HIV reaps its grim harvest”.

References

1. Williams, Anson. "Trivia". Retrieved 1 October 2011.
2. Elliott, J (2003-03-09). "Heimlich: Still saving lives at 83". BBC. Retrieved 2008-09-02.
3. ^ Zengerle, Jason (2007-04-23). "The Choke Artist". The New Republic. pp. 23–36.
4. Anglen, Robert (2003-02-16). "Scientists linked to Heimlich investigated: Experiment infects AIDS patients in China with malaria". The Cincinnati Enquirer. Retrieved 2008-01-27. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
5. "Heimlich's Audacious Maneuver". Los Angeles Times. 1994-10-30. Retrieved 2008-01-27. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
6. Cite error: The named reference Radar was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. Abu-Raddad L, Patnaik P, Kublin J (2006). "Dual infection with HIV and malaria fuels the spread of both diseases in sub-Saharan Africa". Science. 314 (5805): 1603–6. doi:10.1126/science.1132338. PMID 17158329.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
8. Kublin JG; Patnaik P; Jere CS; et al. (2005). "Effect of Plasmodium falciparum malaria on concentration of HIV-1-RNA in the blood of adults in rural Malawi: a prospective cohort study". The Lancet. 365 (9455): 233–40. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)17743-5. PMID 15652606. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |author-separator= ignored (help)
9. Nierengarten MB (2003). "Malariotherapy to treat HIV patients?". The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 3 (6): 321. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(03)00642-X. PMID 12781493. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

• Biography page at the Heimlich Institute
• Outmaneuvered: How We Busted the Heimlich Medical Frauds by Peter M. Heimlich

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• 1920 births
• Living people
• American physicians
• Cornell University alumni
• People from New Rochelle, New York
• First aid
• American Jews
• People from Wilmington, Delaware