Heimlich Maneuver inventor dead at 96 after massive heart attack

Dr. Henry Heimlich, the inventor of the namesake maneuver credited with saving thousands of choking victims during the last several decades, died Saturday at the age of 96.

The legendary physician passed away early Saturday morning at a Cincinnati hospital where he had been admitted earlier this week after suffering from a massive heart attack, his children said in a statement.

“Dad was a hero to many people around the world for a simple reason: He helped save untold numbers of lives through the innovation of common-sense procedures and devices. But he was not only a physician and medical inventor, he was also a humanitarian and a loving and devoted son, husband, father and grandfather,” the statement said.

Born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1920, Heimlich began his medical career in New York City after graduating from what is now known as Weill Cornell Medical College in 1943.

Heimlich developed his live-saving namesake in 1974 while employed as director of surgery at Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati. Despite it being his claim to fame, however, it was hardly his only major contribution to the world of medicine. He invented a procedure in 1955 in which portions of a patient’s stomach were used to replace damaged or destroyed esophaguses, and in 1962 he created the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, a life saving invention still widely used today.

“From the time Dad began his medical career in New York City, to the time he practiced as a thoracic surgeon in Cincinnati, he was committed to coming up with simple, effective ideas that helped save lives and significantly improved people’s quality of life,” said his children.

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“Dad was firm in his convictions and passionate for his causes. He didn’t play politics well. Instead, he was single-minded in his quest to find better ways to save lives. Dad dreamed that anything was possible in the field of medicine, even when critics said otherwise.”

Indeed, Heimlich’s occasionally unorthodox and unprecedented techniques weren’t always widely accepted, and at times resulted in being scorned by other members of the medical community. Particularly, he drew criticism for endorsing a practice that involved injecting Chinese patients with a curable strain of malaria in an attempt to find a cure for HIV.

“I’ll be the first to admit that a number of my ideas are controversial and in some ways unorthodox,” he acknowledged previously. “But I have enough guts to know that when I am right, it will come about as the thing to do, even if others do the wrong thing for a time.”