The development of CPR

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is now the standard treatment for someone having a cardiac arrest. It is, however, a procedure that has emerged only relatively recently. For a number of scientific and religious reasons, it was long considered impossible, even blasphemous, to attempt to reverse ‘death’. Because of these factors, the area of resuscitation failed to progress until the Enlightenment in the 18th Century. The main elements of resuscitation were then developed over the next 200 years, and eventually brought together to create CPR in the early 1960s. The increased demands that morality was seen to place on the medical profession to combat sudden cardiac death subsequent to this development may have been an important factor in why CPR has come to be used in the widespread manner it currently is.