ABSTRACT
Attempts to gain access to the airways in the living patient were initially tried by Hippocrates (460-370 Be), who advised the introduction of a pipe into the larynx in a suffocating patient. In 1542, Vesalius observed that when he opened the chest of an experimental animal, the heartbeat and pulsation of the great vessels stopped, but returned again after he introduced a reed into the airway and inflated the lungs with a bellows [2].
