Heimlich's Maneuvers Read online

  Figure 1.3. My first save: A crew of people and I desperately try to free Otto Klug, whose leg is pinned under the train car. I believe that is me, with my back to the camera, holding a shovel. (From “Rescued from a Trap,” New York Daily News, Friday, August 29, 1941.)

  Meanwhile, the car was slipping deeper and deeper into the mud. The crew had to act fast. They tied a sheet to the train and ran it under Mr. Klug’s back to hold him above the water. Welders used acetylene torches underwater to cut away the steel so that the man could be freed. Seeing that Mr. Klug was in good hands, I returned to the campers, and the press swarmed around us. Mr. Klug was taken to a hospital where his leg was amputated below the knee.

  The next day, my father and mother, Philip and Mary Heimlich, were in a hotel in Chicago on the way to visit relatives in Denver. Of course, they had no idea what had happened. The morning after the train wreck, they bought a copy of the New York Times. Mom saw the front-page story of the train crash and read my name and fainted. When she came to, Dad read her the story, and she learned her only son was alive and well.

  A month later, I appeared again in the Times, this time in an article whose caption read, “Henry Heimlich of Cornell University Medical College accepting from Frank L. Jones, president of the Greater New York Safety Council, the annual prize, a gold watch, for his calmness and courage in saving a life in a railroad wreck near South Kent, Conn.”1 The article shows a photo of me, beaming, as I accept the award.

  Figures 1.4 and 1.5. Recognized: I accept a watch as an award for saving the life of Otto Klug. (Figure 1.5 [right] from “Children Escape in Train Wreck; 2 of Crew Killed,” New York Times, Friday, August 29, 1941.)

  Now that I think about it, that recognition was my first brush with fame. Accounts of the accident called me a “hero.” But, even back then, I could not have cared less about the attention. Otto Klug was alive, and that’s all that mattered.

  What I could not have known at the time was that there would be many more Otto Klugs—individuals whose lives I would save using a combination of medical expertise and common sense. And with those experiences would come immense satisfaction from knowing that I was able to help sustain life. But there would be many challenges, too, for I was to learn that the field of medicine was not only a fascinating discipline from which amazing ideas sprout, but that it is also a political minefield.

  Saving lives begins with wanting to help people, just as I had wanted to help Otto Klug on that summer day in 1941. I attribute my desire to help others to my parents.

  Philip and Mary Heimlich taught me that the highest calling in life is to serve others, even when life poses very difficult challenges. My father was a social worker and a pioneer in the rehabilitation of delinquent youth and convicts in prison—individuals on whom society had given up. He founded the Youth Counsel Bureau, which began as an interfaith project to assist youths who were in trouble with the law, and he worked for the Jewish Board of Guardians for thirty years. My mother grew up in a poor family and lost her mother when she was a teenager, yet she understood the value of hard work, sacrifice, and taking responsibility. Both of my parents believed in the importance of family.

  Mom and Dad were the most generous people I have ever known. They devoted their lives to helping others, sometimes in big ways and sometimes by simply offering a listening ear. When we lived in New Rochelle, New York, where I grew up, there were always relatives staying with us. At one point, my mother’s five brothers and sisters lived with us. When the Great Depression hit, family members who had lost everything they owned knew they had a place to stay at Phil and Mary’s. My parents even took in my consumptive aunt until they found a facility that could properly care for her. All types of people with all kinds of problems came to see my parents. One night, it might have been a senator or a judge; the next night, an ex-con. At the end of his life, Dad lived with us. Even as he neared his one hundredth birthday, people still called and came to see him to discuss their problems and seek his advice.

  Figure 2.1. My parents: Philip and Mary Heimlich were the most generous people I have ever known.

  Figure 2.2. A lively home: People from all walks of life came to visit us and to seek advice from my parents.

  “Pop” (as we called him) was born on April 26, 1887. From the time he was a child, he had a very bad stutter. He despaired of getting a job after graduating from the then tuition-free City College of New York, now City University, in 1909. Around that time, he met a girl named Mary Epstein, whom he liked very much.

  Mary was born on May 23, 1892, and was the eldest of six children. She had had a difficult time growing up. Her mother died in 1906, when Mary was only a teenager, and so she was left to take care of her five younger siblings, which included an infant. Her father remarried, hoping to provide a mother for his six children. The entire family—including relatives of Mary’s stepmother—moved into a small apartment in a poor Jewish neighborhood on the Lower East Side of New York City. Altogether, there were ten people living in the apartment.

  Figure 2.3. My mother: Mary Epstein cared for her five younger siblings after their mother died.

  Mary had hoped that having a stepmother would make her life and the lives of her siblings easier. Instead, the opposite was true. The stepmother was abusive and frequently beat my mother and her brothers and sisters. When her father realized what was going on, he moved all six children into a separate apartment. He supported them, although he stayed with his wife’s family. My mother, at the age of sixteen, was determined to raise her five brothers and sisters and to keep them together.

  Pop knew nothing of this, only that he enjoyed spending time with Mary. However, because she was always surrounded by five children, he assumed she was married and was hesitant to ask her out. Another reason for his hesitation was that Pop was still nervous about his stutter. His college advisor was sympathetic. One day, she pulled him aside and suggested he get a job out of town, in a place where no one knew him, “and don’t tell them you stutter,” she advised. “Each time before you speak, take a deep breath, make up your mind not to stutter, and explode!”

  Figure 2.4. My father: Philip Heimlich struggled with a stuttering problem but learned how to overcome it.

  After graduating from college, Pop was offered an instructor’s position in architectural drafting at Rose Polytechnic Institute (now the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) in Terre Haute, Indiana. The Midwest seemed like another country for a Jewish kid from the Bronx, but he remembered the words of his college advisor and decided to give it a try. Before he left for Indiana, Pop was told some other enlightening information. A friend let him know that Mary Epstein was not married, that the children she cared for were her siblings.

  After a short courtship, Pop proposed to Mary and asked her to move west with him. She turned down his proposal because she felt obligated to continue to care for her siblings, so Pop went on to Indiana. While at Rose Polytech, he was determined to end his nagging stutter. Pop practiced his college advisor’s take-a-breath-and-explode method, and it worked. He was thrilled about this personal victory, but he also was homesick. Pop missed his hometown and his girl, so, after teaching at the institute for one year, he returned to New York City.

  When Pop returned to New York, he again proposed to Mary, and this time she said yes. Mary was still taking care of her siblings when she accepted my father’s proposal, but the couple hit upon a good arrangement: Pop had decided to give up architecture and instead become a social worker. He and Mary would be cottage parents at the Hawthorne Reform School, part of the Jewish Board of Guardians in Hawthorne, New York. In those days, young boys who got into trouble were sent to the reform school until they were old enough to work. Mary boarded out her younger siblings to people living in the vicinity of the school, and her two older brothers were employed and remained in New York City. In the end, Mary’s brothers and sisters all grew up to lead successful and productive lives, a testament to the way she raised and nurtured them. A few yea
rs later, Pop took a job in Wilmington, Delaware, to be director of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, the Jewish counterpart of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). On May 31, 1914, my sister was born. Philip and Mary named her Cecilia, but we all called her “Cele.”

  I was my parents’ second child, born on February 3, 1920, and was given the name Henry Judah Heimlich.

  Figure 2.5. My sister: Cecilia Heimlich was born in 1914. (Photograph courtesy of Cecilia Rosenthal.)

  We were still living in Wilmington at the time, but a year after my birth, my father got a job with the Jewish Board of Guardians in New York City. Rather than move back to the city, we settled in New Rochelle. We could barely afford the suburbs, but my parents felt that Cele and I would get a better education there. The move proved to be more than just a financial sacrifice for Pop: To start his day, he had to walk several miles to get to the train station in downtown New Rochelle, where he boarded the train for New York City. After work, he would again walk several miles from the train station to our home.

  We lived in a four-bedroom house in New Rochelle. A stream ran in front of our house. When I was three or four years old, Mom would place me beside the stream and let me hold a string with a clothespin tied at the end, dangling in the water. Years later, she laughed and told me I thought I was fishing. Cele, who is six years my senior, has told me that I would sit there for hours, daydreaming. Even as an adult, I have been told I daydream. But it’s a good thing. In fact, on more than one occasion, I have come up with a groundbreaking medical discovery after a nice bout of daydreaming.

  Figure 2.6. A baby: I was born on February 3, 1920.

  Figure 2.7. A happy childhood: I grew up in New Rochelle, New York, where I enjoyed daydreaming by the stream that ran in front of our house.

  AN EARLY INNOVATION

  Growing up in New Rochelle, I grew to love the water. I used to go swimming at the Hudson Park public beach on the Long Island Sound. I adored watching the boats and wished that one day I could have one for my very own. My love of the water led to an early attempt at innovation and a lesson in rejection by my peers.

  When I was about ten years old, I saw a child floating on a makeshift raft made from three boards that came together to form a triangle. Under each of the three corners of the triangle, an inflated ball was attached, allowing the raft to float. The boy sat on one of the corners and paddled his way down the sound. It looked like a lot of fun.

  On my way home from the beach, I could not stop thinking about the boy paddling along and got an idea to build my own boat, similar to the one he had. I went to our basement and found three boards, each about five feet long, and nailed the ends of the boards together to form a triangle. I then found three empty, rectangular motor-oil cans, making sure to screw tight the cap of each container to ensure that no water could get in. Each can had a hinged handle, which I used to nail a can to each corner of my vessel.

  In no time, I had completed my replica of the boy’s raft. I stepped inside the triangle and lifted the raft so that it encircled me, and I grabbed a small board that would serve as a paddle. Paddle in hand and sort of wearing my raft, I walked three blocks to a nearby inlet. I attracted the attention of most of the neighborhood kids who followed me; we were all excited to see if my invention would work. When we got to the inlet, I walked into the slimy water.

  The raft wasn’t very sturdy, but it floated. But rather than cheer on my success, a few of the kids who had followed me thought it would be fun to throw stones at my boat. They aimed rocks at the cans that held me afloat until they started pulling away from the boards. The raft came apart, and my maiden voyage came to an end. As I journeyed back to my house, carrying what was left of my vessel, I felt both proud and discouraged. I had accomplished what I had set out to do but was sad to see my invention destroyed.

  I had no idea then that the stone-throwing incident would later serve as a metaphor for what I endured when I became a medical inventor. Sadly, people with new ideas are often attacked, sometimes for no reason other than the critics do not like someone else getting credit. Just as the boys tried to destroy my invention by throwing stones, some of my future naysayers would also try to sink my ideas.

  I knew I wanted to be a doctor since before I started grammar school. I remember our family physician, Dr. Belle Jacobson, coming to make house calls. In those days, it was extremely unusual for women to become physicians. Dr. Jacobson was a very small woman, but when she entered the vestibule, she completely took over and filled us with a sense of confidence. I admired the way her calm and in-charge demeanor put us all at ease and made us feel that the family member she was treating would be all right. I fantasized that one day I would be like Dr. Jacobson and that I would discover a surgical operation no one else could perform.

  When I was in high school, my role model was Dr. Edward Jenner, a British physician born in 1749 and who is considered today to be the father of immunology.1 Jenner, who lived in the English countryside with his family, had heard a farmer’s tale that milkmaids sometimes contracted cowpox from milking cows. (Cowpox is a disease that causes patients to develop lesions. It is similar to smallpox but much less virulent.) What’s more, Jenner understood that milkmaids who got cowpox seemed never to develop smallpox. This was an important observation at that time, as smallpox was wiping out much of the world’s population.

  In 1796, Jenner was eager to test the efficacy of cowpox as a vaccine, and he inoculated an eight-year-old boy named James Phipps with cowpox matter taken from the pus-filled lesions on the finger of a milkmaid. Phipps developed a few cowpox lesions that were not serious. About a month later, Jenner injected young Phipps with the smallpox virus. Of course, such an experiment would be considered unacceptable according to today’s standards of medical ethics. Still, Jenner’s vaccine worked—the boy did not get smallpox.

  A year after inoculating James Phipps, Jenner reported the results of his experiment to the Royal Society, but the paper was rejected. Undeterred, Jenner tested more cases and then privately published a small book on his procedure, which he then called vaccination (which comes from the Latin vacca, meaning “cow”).

  But Jenner continued to struggle to find support from his British peers. When he went to London to locate more volunteers to be vaccinated, he could not find any, so he looked to other European countries for volunteers. As more and more people were vaccinated, smallpox cases dramatically declined. In 1802, and then again in 1807, the British Parliament awarded Jenner a total of £30,000 for his innovation. Still, Britons paid a price for British doctors objecting to vaccination, for those who were denied inoculations were left susceptible to the deadly smallpox.

  As a boy, I dreamed that someday I could come up with ideas that were as innovative as Jenner’s. I was naïve to assume that if I could accomplish such a thing, then my colleagues would treat me better than his had treated him.

  I learned more from my father than I ever learned in school. I grew up in New Rochelle, New York, during the Great Depression, and money was tight, so I learned the importance of a dollar. But my father also taught me that money wasn’t everything. As a social worker with the Jewish Board of Guardians, Pop dedicated his life to helping convicts and delinquents, a calling that brought him respect and deep satisfaction. He visited and advised Jewish convicts who were incarcerated in New York State prisons, as well as some held in a mental hospital; Pop visited each inmate several times a year. When the convicts were about to be discharged, he helped them adapt to life on the outside and frequently got them jobs in companies owned by his friends. The job paid only $2,000 a year. To better support our family, Pop took a second job at night working in the post office, then later he ran a printing company, all while he continued to help convicts. Despite the long hours, he never complained.

  As with most families, the Depression hit my family unexpectedly. It happened when I was beginning high school. At the time, I did not fully understand how the country’s devastated economy affecte
d my family, but things became clearer when my mother sent me on a strange errand one day. She gave me a note and key and told me to deliver it to the vice president at the People’s Bank for Savings in downtown New Rochelle. As I handed the banker the note and the key, he kindly said to me, “Tell your mother I am sorry this had to happen.” Shortly thereafter, we moved out of our house, for I had delivered to the banker the key to our home and a note explaining that we couldn’t pay the mortgage. We soon rented another house, larger and more attractive than the house we had owned, and remained there until I finished high school.

  Despite our financial problems, my parents did their best to have enough food on hand so we could share it with others. Every Sunday, the entire family, including my aunts, uncles, and cousins who lived in New Rochelle, would come to our house for dinner. Sometimes my mother prepared roast beef and brown potatoes, or the men drove to the center of town to the kosher delicatessen to buy pastrami and corned beef for a deli supper. Since my parents spent so much attention on other family members and even strangers who came through our house, I sometimes felt neglected. When people spoke so glowingly of my parents, it made me a bit jealous, although I later appreciated just how wonderful it was to grow up in a house that was filled with love and care.

  ANTI-SEMITISM

  Our middle-class neighborhood in New Rochelle was unusual for the times in that there were people of mixed nationalities and religions. For example, the father of my friend Steve Kovaks was a Swedish immigrant who owned a beauty salon and barbershop. The Emanuels, who were from Greece, owned a shoe-repair business. And there were three or four Jewish families in our neighborhood. My grammar school was a melting pot, too.