[Historical vignettes in intensive care medicine]

Intensive care medicine is the youngest anaesthesiological field. Its roots only go back to the 19th century. It was only in the middle of the 20th century that the technical, organisational and staffing conditions existed for providing concentrated care for the critically ill and injured. Poliomyelitis epidemics, especially the one in Copenhagen in 1952, contributed significantly to the establishment of the first intensive care units. In Germany, the first intensive care units were set up at the end of the fifties. Soon after, in the sixties, publications on intensive care already made up a large part of anaesthesiological literature.