The History of Instruments for CPR

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation -- commonly known as CPR -- dates back almost 3,000 years, according to CPRAwareness.org. Between ancient and modern times, medical professionals and laypeople utilized instruments to help restore life to a person who had stopped breathing.

1500s

• Bellows, commonly used to stoke fires, served a second purpose by the mid-1500s, blowing smoky air into the lungs of drowning victims. Users of this early methods lacked knowledge of human anatomy, however, and didn't realize the importance of a clear airway.

1700s

• The Paris Academy of Sciences recommended mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the first half of the 1700, states eCPRCertification.com, but use of less-successful methods, such as inverting and warming the victim, continued.

1800s

• CPRAwareness.org reports that in the early 1800s, lifeguards kept horses at their stations. In the event of a drowning, the lifeguard would lift a victim onto the horse and have the animal jog up and down the beach. The motion sometimes dislodged the water, but complaints nationwide about unsanitary conditions ended the practice in 1815.

1900s

• Dr. George Crile performed the first case of closed-chest cardiac massage in the United States in 1903, reports eCPRCertification. In the 1950s, the U.S. military adopted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation -- invented by physicians Peter Safar and James Elam -- for unresponsive patients. Around 1960, the American Heart Association started a program to familiarize doctors with CPR.