The Jerk We Owe So Much.

There were those who didn’t like Henry very much.  He was accused of lying, cheating, stealing, and even cruelty to animals.

Then why do we remember him today?

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His research partner, Dr. Edward A. Patrick, accused him of stealing the idea the two came up with together.  The partner said Henry stole all the credit for himself, shutting Dr. Patrick out of recognition for everything the pair did.

When the partners were doing research for their groundbreaking discovery, they used beagles in their animal testing.  Granted, the tests they did on the poor critters were not particularly dangerous, as in life-threatening, but the poor dogs would have been quite uncomfortable. 

I bet they were scared too.

I guess I should mention that I really like beagles.

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After he had developed the procedure that made him famous, some say he claimed it was much more important than it actually was.  He got in a strong disagreement with the Red Cross when they said his procedure was not proven and thought they should wait to recommend its use until Henry’s claims were substantiated.

Henry said there was no time to wait as the procedure would save thousands of lives each year.

His claims began to grow.  He said his procedure could save people suffering from asthma attacks. 

Other doctors said it not only wouldn’t save asthma sufferers, but could instead kill them.

Henry said it could save drowning victims. 

Experts said, nope, it wouldn’t do that either, and would just waste valuable time needed to perform CPR or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

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In the 1980s, Henry brought out a different treatment that he said could cure such widely varied maladies as Lyme Disease, cancer, and AIDS.  He had done some research and found that, in the 1920s, there was a team of doctors who infected their patients with malaria, which caused them to break out in a high fever, which the doctors did not treat for three weeks, saying the high fever would cure the disease he was researching. 

That doctors were studying…are you ready for this…syphilis.  Evidently the treatment was at least somewhat effective, as the doctors who discovered malariotherapy were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1927.

Experts everywhere roundly condemned Henry’s idea, saying it could do serious harm to those who underwent it.

Trying to circumvent the time it would take to subject his ideas to tests in the United States, he went to China and Africa and did unregulated studies.

American doctors were furious, saying Henry’s studies were dangerous, not rooted in scientific fact, and a violation of human rights.  It has been criticized by the Center for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, and condemned by other health professionals and human rights advocates as medical “atrocity.”

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In 2003 Henry was exposed by “The Cincinnati Enquirer” to have been lying for about forty years.  Henry had been claiming to be the first surgeon to do a total organ replacement.  According to the report, when Henry did his experiments with organ replacement on dogs in 1955, it had already been done by a Romanian surgeon dozens of times.

Shameful, but I want to know what he’s got against man’s best friend?

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In the first decade of the 21^st century, Henry’s own son, Peter, launched an assault on his father’s claims, saying Henry had been engaged in, “a 50-year history of fraud.”

Peter said, “Our research revealed my father to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing – a spectacular con man, serial liar, and arguably one of the most successful medical humbugs of the late 20^th century.  Armed with considerable charm and an instinct for public relations, my father used the media to pass himself off as a medical genius /inventor and humanitarian, eventually being crowned ‘America’s most famous doctor’ (The New Republic). ”

Peter also said, “In May 1977, after a series of problems, he was fired from his last medical job as Chief of Surgery at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital.  A June 3, 1977 memo from my father to hospital president Warren C. Falberg confirms that: ‘You are well aware that my termination from the hospital was not initiated by me and that I did not resign.’  He never again practiced surgery because he could not obtain malpractice insurance.”

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In 2016, Henry was living in a retirement home.  Resident Patty Ris was at the table next to him when Henry noticed that she was in distress.  He rose, moved quickly behind her, and performed the maneuver that had been developed by, and named after, him.

The Cincinnatti Enquirer, the New York Times, and WCPO-TV reported that he had used the Heimlich Maneuver for the first time ever to save a life.

Was it vindication for Dr. Henry Heimlich?

It turns out that Heimlich had claimed to have used his maneuver on a fellow diner…back in 2003.

Subsequent reports in McKnight’s and Slate questioned whether the retirement home incident was just a publicity stunt.

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It is estimated that Dr. Heimlich, through his famous maneuver, has saved more people that a normal person will even know in their entire lives.  I have used it and chances are you have either used it, had your life saved by it, or know someone who has been saved by it.  I give Dr. Heimlich full credit for it.  He deserves it and will probably be long remembered because of it.  Chances are his negative activities that his own son accuses him of will be forgotten.

I just wish he’d left the beagles alone.

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Choking is the number four cause of accidental death in the United States.  The Heimlich Maneuver is a quick, easy, and effective method of treating it.

It will even work on dogs.

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