[The evolution of respiratory reanimation as seen by the drowned]

In addition to anecdotal techniques born from Galen reasoning, the method of recovering apparently drowned persons in the XVIIIth century surprises by the use of present techniques of artificial respiration. However, for over a century, these techniques was left on behalf of manual methods until the sixteens. In the XVIIIth century, resuscitation involves two principles: stimulation and artificial respiration. Amid stimulation, in addition to warmth, the choice treatment was to blow tobacco smoke into the rectum, which was used until the beginning of the XXth century. Inflation of the lungs was practised with mouth-to-mouth, and endotracheal or nasal intubation or tracheostomy with bellows, pistons or bladders, and the use of oxygen. But J. Leroy d'Etiolles, in 1827, demonstrated to the académie des Sciences the iatrogen peril of the inflation of the lungs, and the risk to leave the people sophistical techniques without education. This transaction gave the alarm to the european philanthropic Societies which stood down the inflation of lungs in the method of recovering apparently drowned persons. Between 1830 and the sixteens, inflation was put in the place of "forced expiration" techniques: the famous Sylvester or Schaeffer methods. From the outset of the XXth century, oxygen is used widely by helpers, and physicians have elaborated subcutaneous and intravenous ways of infusion to this oxygen. It is only in 1958 that Safar and al. demonstrated mouth-to-mouth superiority in relation to chest compressions.