Singultus, paper-bag ventilation, and hypercapnia

Sir Louis Francis Knuthsen (1869-1957), the physician who painstakingly listed almost all treatments known for obstinate hiccough, ascribes the holding of breath method to Philip Henry Pye-Smith, FRS (1840-1914), consultant at Guy's Hospital in London. In fact, the strategy is much older and was mentioned by greats such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Aristoteles (384-322 BC), and Eryximachus (late-fifth century bce). Hypoventilation to reduce central nervous system excitability was used in antiquity as evidenced by Cyriacus' treatment of Artemia, the daughter of Emperor Diocletian (≈ 244-311). She was suffering from (among others) seizures that Cyriacus was apparently controlling by tightening a scarf around her neck, as depicted by Mathias Grünewald (1460-1528) on a wing of the so-called Heller Altar now on display at the Historical Museum, Frankfurt, Germany. In modern times, around 1920, inducing hypercapnia by CO₂ inhalation as therapy for hiccups was suggested and tried by a number of anesthetists, such as Americans Russel Firth Sheldon (1885-1960) and Brian Collins Sword (1889-1956) in Boston; Briton Christopher Langton Hewer (1896-1986) at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London; Austrian Karl Doppler (1887-1947) in Vienna; and the German/Polish Arthur Dzialoszynski (1893-1977) in Berlin. Although various authors assign the scientific primate to any of them, the first mention of carbon dioxide inhalation as treatment of singultus in the scientific literature is of French origin and was made by Paris pharmacist Henri Bocquillon-Limousin (1856-1917) in his 1892 Formulaire des médicaments nouveaux et des médications nouvelles.