I can remember the first time I did CPR. It was over 30 years ago and I was nervous as heck. I remember an "old-timer" telling me to just settle down and relax. After all this time, I cannot remember what that patient looked like, but I do remember the sage advice from a more experienced voice.

Little did I know at the time that the simple technique of doing chest compressions while ventilating had a long and storied history. Over the years, the method of resuscitating someone who is not breathing and does not have a heartbeat has changed with research and technology. Trying to resuscitate the dead dates back to the Egyptians, some 3,500 years ago. When someone died, the Egyptians would hang the patient by his or her feet, applying chest pressure to assist expiration and releasing the pressure to assist inspiration. About 1,000 years ago, the dead had a tube put in their trachea and bellows (the same used for fireplaces) were used to put air into them.

The Dutch Humane Society in 1767 published instructions for resuscitating drowning victims: "Keep the victim warm, give mouth-to-mouth ventilation and perform insufflation of smoke burning tobacco into the rectum." Other methods of resuscitation that have been tried over the years include flogging or beating the victims until they responded, bouncing a person on a trotting horse and rolling a person over a barrel.

The first record of external chest compression was written about by John Howard in the 18th century. About the same time, Dr. Friedrich Maass reported the first use of chest compressions on humans. In 1904, Dr. George Washington Crile reported the first successful resuscitation of a patient using external chest compressions. Later, he would do experiments on animals using chest compressions, artificial respiration and epinephrine.

In 1952, Dr. Paul Zoll and a team of other doctors in Boston applied electric charges externally to the chest to resuscitate two patients whose hearts had stopped. The first patient lived only 20 minutes. The second patient survived for 11 months after 52 hours of electrical stimulation. In 1959, Dr. James Elam wrote the instructional booklet Rescue Breathing, which was distributed throughout the United States. He later produced films demonstrating the life-saving technique and contributed with Peter Safar in the development of a mannequin called Resusci Anne, produced by Laerdal of Norway, which allowed the public to learn the technique in a safe manner.