Henry Heimlich Heimlich's medical assistant in China. The design of the valve allows air and blood to drain from the chest cavity in order to allow a collapsed lung to re-expand. The invention was credited with saving the lives of hundreds of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Heimlich first published his views about the maneuver in a June 1974 informal 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. From 1976 to 1985, the
Henry Heimlich may have saved the lives of more than 50,000 people. However, according to Sayre in 2005, "Despite widespread education on the use of the Heimlich maneuver and other techniques for treatment of acute airway obstruction, the death rate remains stable." From the early 1980s, Heimlich advocated malariotherapy, the deliberate infection of a person with benign malaria in order to treat ailments such as cancer, Lyme disease and (more ) HIV. the treatments were unsuccessful, and 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