February 12, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, it might surprise you to hear that CPR was only invented in 1960. Here to tell the story of the man who invented it, Peter Safar, is Kevin Hazzard, author of American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. CPR stands for
cardio pulmonary resurrection, and I might surprise you that it
was only invented in nineteen sixty. Here to tell the
story of the man who invented it. Peter Saffer is
Kevin Hazard, author of American Sirens, Take It Away.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Kevin Peter Saffer was born in nineteen twenties Vienna to
two physicians they met while they were dissecting bodies in
medical school. He grew up with this very bohemian existence,
and then in March of nineteen thirty eight, he and
his father are in the Vienna opera house. They come
(00:54):
out afterward. You know, he's young, he's a teenager. He's
feeling very excited about the world and what he find
when he steps out of the opera house this complete madness.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Are people waving.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Swastika flags in the street and chanting Jews out. That's
where he learns that the Nazis have swept across the
Austrian border. Within a couple of days, they've occupied Vienna,
completely changing his life. Because Saffer was a child of physicians,
(01:25):
he's protected from conscription into the German army by a
group of doctors, a group of friendly doctors who routinely
fake medical ailments for safer. Kids in Austria growing up
at that time are all going to be sent to
the Eastern Front, which is one of history's great meat grinders.
About eighty percent of the kids both above below and
(01:49):
in his high school class were all killed in the
Eastern Front. So had he been conscripted into the army
and sent east the fight in Russia, chances are he
would have been killed. And his family friends knew this,
and so they faked a number of illnesses in order
to keep him in the hospital and out of reach
of the army. Eventually, this goes on for so long
(02:10):
that the Army is, you know, chairman, Army is essentially
tricked into believing that this kid just has far too
many ailments, and he's released from any threat of conscription
and he's already in the hospital. So he begins working
as as an orderly and when the war is over
in nineteen forty five, he finishes his medical cooling. But
(02:32):
he now has a tremendous sense of guilt. So many
of the kids he grew up with are dead, and
they're dead because they didn't have powerful people to protect them.
And Stafford's alive, and he's alive because his parents had
enough connections to keep him hying.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
He swears to.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Himself that look, if all those people died and I lived,
and it had to be for a reason, and I
will find that reason, and I will work tirelessly throughout
my entire life to make good on this incredible miracle
that's been stowed upon me. Nineteen forty nine, he gets
an offer to go and study at Yale, leaves Vienna,
(03:09):
moves to the US. He encounters anestesiology, which at that
point is brand new, so brand new in fact that
where he comes from. In Vienna, if you're going to
have a surgery, what the doctor would do was soak
a rag and ether and place it over your mouth,
essentially hold it there until you stop kicking, and once
you suck resisting, then they remove the rag, begin surgery,
(03:33):
and if you start to wake up, they just put
the rag back over you again. That's anesthesiology where Saffer lives.
When he comes to the US, he sees drugs given
by IV, drugs given by endotrachio two, which is you know,
the two places down your throat and it's calibrated and
it's precise, and it's all brand new and exciting. So
he enters into anesthesiology. In nineteen fifty six, he comes
(03:58):
across this study was written by a Texas doctor named
James Elam. What the study says is that there's enough
oxygen in the air.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
You breathe out to keep somebody else alive.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Now this is important for Saffer for two reasons. One
is that at that point, conventional wisdom says that if
you breathe into somebody's mouth, you're gonna kill them with
all of your gases, You're gonna breathe out carbon dioxide
and it's just gonna poison their blood and it's gonna
kill them, whereas Elim is saying, no, no, there's gonna
(04:31):
be enough oxygen in this air to keep someone alive.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And the second.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Is that Saffor has witnessed at this point what we
consider to be a rescue breathing and he knows instantly
that it doesn't work. In nineteen fifty six, if somebody
stop breathing and you're a medical professional, what you're trained
to do was roll a person over onto their face
by their shoulders and then press down on their shoulder blades.
(05:05):
Then you would lift up on their arms, and then
you would press down on their shoulder blades again. And
the idea here is that you're sort of flexing and
bowing their body in such a way that their lungs
are going to move almost by accident, and thereby sort
of let some air.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Squeak into their lungs. I mean, this.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Process really is like what you would do to a
Thanksgiving turkey. Saffer looks at this and he knows there's
no way that any oxygen is actually getting into anybody's
lungs this way, but he doesn't know what to do
about it, because there's no other method that somebody on
the street could use. Once you get into the hospital,
the doctors can can deliver oxygen through all sorts of
advanced ways, but someone at home, someone who witnesses another
(05:46):
person drop and stop breathing, they have nothing that they
can do. Saffire has been mulling this over, and he
comes across Helum's study, which the world has ignored for
two years. Saffer instantly recognizes.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
This is it.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
This can be the key to saving lives in the street.
What he wants to do is set up a series
of tests, and what the test will prove is that
not only does the back press arm lift method not work,
but that rescue breathing, the art of breathing into somebody
else's mouth deliver your oxygen into them will keep them alive.
(06:23):
So he recruits a number of volunteers. He goes around
to try to get funding, and every person he goes
to essentially says no. They don't want to give him
any money. They don't believe in what he's got to say,
and more importantly, they don't believe in him as a
thirty three year old doctor who's got a young family
and is trying to build a career. This is probably
(06:44):
the point at which he would.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Let go and say, Okay, well I tried. The world's
not going to listen to me.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
But again, Saffer is one of the very few people
who was saved during an incredibly violent time, and he's
desperate to make good on being kept alive, and so
he decides, forget, I'll just go ahead and do this
on my own. So even though he's never run a
test before, and even though he doesn't have any place
(07:09):
to do the test, he doesn't have any money to
do the test, and he doesn't have any way to
prove that what he says is in any way valid.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
He goes ahead and he schedules the test. There's two things.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
That Saffer needs to prove here. The first is that
arm lift back press doesn't work. The second is that
mouth and mouth does work. The obvious thing to do
would be to simply bring in a bunch of professionals
and have them do both armlift backpress and mouth and
(07:42):
mouth and just see what works and what doesn't work.
But Saffor doesn't simply want to prove that you could
do mouth and mouth. This is a technique that he
believes will save lives, not just a few lives, but
lives all over the world, and he thinks the only
way for that to happen is for ordinary people to
be actually the one is doing this job that when
somebody drops it, the person sitting next to them can
(08:04):
immediately begin saving their lives.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Because he recognizes that the time it's.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Going to take you to get to the hospital is
way too long, certainly for your brain to be saved
if you haven't been getting any oxygen. So what good
is just teaching a bunch of doctors this technique. He
needs to teach lay people this technique.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And you've been listening to Kevin Hazard tell the story
of how CPR came to be and the story of
Peter Saffer and how he was saved from certain death
by being helped and aided by doctors to keep him
out of conscription and out of the Nazi army. And
(08:43):
my goodness, what a day that must have been in
March of nineteen thirty eight, stepping out of the Vienna
Opera house only to see Nazi swarming the streets and
occupying this once great and powerful city, Vienna and the
entire country. When we come back more of the remarkable
(09:04):
story of Peter Saffer and how this thing called CPR
that saves countless lives each and every day. The story
of CPR and the story of Peter Saffer continues here
on our American stories, and we return to our American
(09:40):
stories and the story of Peter Saffer and the invention
of CPR. Here again is Kevin Hazard, author of American Sirens.
You'll also hear from Saffer himself Austrian accent and all.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
What he wants to do. He wants to recruit professionals
to do the old method. The method debt is accepted,
but that he's convinced is absolutely nothing. And he's going
to recruit a bunch of complete unknowns, children, some cases
as young as ten. He gets secretaries, he gets accountants,
(10:18):
he gets just ordinary people, people off the street, and
he's going to give them a ten second crash course
in how to do mouth them out and then let
them go and allow them to do it.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
He goes to doctors, he.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Goes to medical students, he goes to.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Nurses, and he says, Okay, here's what I want you
to do.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I'm going to pay you one hundred and fifty dollars
and you're gonna come and what I'm gonna do is,
I'm gonna sedate you, and then I'm going to paralyze
you unce you're unconscious. And then over the course of
several hours, while you are unconscious and unable to breathe,
I'm going to run this experiment on you. Record someone
(11:01):
doing the arm lift chest press on you, and we're
gonna see that that doesn't work. And when it doesn't work,
they're gonna back up and I'm gonna bring in a secretary.
I'm gonna bring in an eleven year old boy scount,
and then I'm gonna teach them how to do mouth
and mouth, and they're gonna keep you alive for the
remainder of this study. And this isn't gonna happen just once.
(11:23):
It's gonna happen forty nine different times. This sounds literally
like the world's worst sales pitch. Somebody's saying to you, Hey,
I'm gonna sedate you, paralyze you, use a method that
we both know doesn't work, to nearly kill you. And
then I'm gonna bring in someone who has no idea
what they're doing, and they're gonna.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Keep you alive. And we're gonna do this to you
multiple times.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
This is the guy who's very young, who's totally inexperienced,
who's trying to prove something that the world does not
believe is true. And he gets not one or ten
or twenty, but he gets thirty two different people to
agree to this.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
And these are enough desperate people. Again, these are medical
students or doctors and nurses.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
These are professionals, which shows you two things. One Saffer
is an incredibly perspuisive person and two They know he's right,
and they know that what he's doing is going to
save millions of lives, so they volunteer. The first test
was on Saturday, December.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Eighth, nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
At that point in time, Baltimore City Hospital was closed
on the weekends.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Saffer knew that every Saturday and.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Every Sunday he'd have an open or. He would bring
in a number of subjects, you know, maybe half a
dozen or so as many would fit in the room.
And then around the side he would have the chief
of the Baltimore Fire Department who would come in. That's
who's going to do the established method, this professional and
who's doing the.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Back press arm lift.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And then around the edges of the room is where
he has his laid people who are going to do
the experimental method in which Saffer wants to be able
to show the world because he knows that there's only
so much she can do as one person. He's not
going to be able to go everywhere and talk to everybody.
He needs a way to deliver this incredible piece of
life saving technology to the whole role. So he wants
(13:08):
to record this movie.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
The experimental study you are about to see during which
we compared various methods of artificial respiration by anesthetizing and
curarizing these subjects in order to simulate limp as phixia
victims by having untrained lay personnel perform some of these methods.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
He brings these people in, plays them on the floor,
starts an iv first thing he does is he gives
a sedative which knocks them out.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Now the subject is being rendered unconscious by the intravenous
injection of one milligram of scopolamine.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And once they're unconscious, he gives them a paralytic which
stops them from breathing.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
All muscles, including the respiratory muscles, will remain paralyzed for
the next three hours.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And then he begins mechanically ventilating them, which means he
gets a ventilator bag and he's just breathing for them,
and he calls over the firefighter.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Each of these people is on very.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Carefully calibrated machines to measure the depth of the rise
and fall of the chest with each different maneuver, and
also the oxygen level in their blood.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
The nemograph shows title volumes of two thousand miniters and more.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Saffer begins his tests and he sedates paralyzes his patients.
So at this point they're literally in respiratory arrest.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
They are not breathing.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
He begins mechanically ventilating them with a bag just to
keep oxygen in while he's getting everybody ready, and he
brings over the fire too. This is a man with
decades of experience. He's been doing this many many times.
He sits down and he begins doing the back press
armlift on the patients.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Now we will study they currently taught back pressure arm
lift method.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
And for the first time, the effectiveness of this procedure
is actually being measured.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
First, we study the chest pressure method with a subject
in the supine position. Now the restu is performing the
back pressure arm lift method as it was taught since
nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Saffra has this wonderful eye for drama, and he knows
that if people are going to be watching this video,
then he's got to be able to draw them in.
And so when he's doing the back press on left
method with the fire chief on the video, he allows
the man to oxygen level to drama, not to the
low nineties or the upper eighties, but all the way
down to eighties just continues.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
To fall and fall and fall.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
This is a point at which any emergency room in
the country would be springing.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
To action to save a patient.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
And Saffa's brought this person who ring down to the
brick no.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Air, but reaches the alveolfe, so there is almost zero
exchange and air is squeezed out of the lungs.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Forget that this isn't helping people, This mechanical procedure is
actually actively killing them. So they measure oxygen levels, swinging
down from ninety eight to ninety six to ninety one
to ninety.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
To eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Clearly it isn't working, so they pull them away.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Bag pressure armlift and chest pressure armlift methods of artificial
respiration proved unreliable.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
They roll the patient back over and then Saffor waves
and this ten year old child walks forward.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
This boy scout will perform mouth to airway breathing. He
weighs one hundred pounds.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Now on the ground before him he is a full
grown man about two hundred pounds, and incomes a boy scout.
He kneels down at the patient's head and Safire says, Okay,
here's what you're gonna do, and he gives him a
ten second.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Crash course on rescue.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Breathing, tild the head, pinch the nose, pull back on
the jaw, put your mouth on.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Breathe as hard as you can.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
The child leans forward, does everything, Saffre says, breathes out,
Nothing happens, chest doesn't rocky.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Nothing's going on.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Clearly oxygen was not delivered, so the kid sort of
repositions ahead, leans down.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
He has some difficulty that corrects himself.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
On video, leans down and immediately brings this patient back.
This video is incredibly dramatic and it's incredibly effective. Everyone
who sees it has blown away. Everybody's eyes shoot to
the monitors and the oxygens in love with those from
eighty seven, eighty nine to ninety two to ninety five.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
They can't believe. It just floats right back up.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Literally recording this, he was able to adequately ventilate subjects
weighing up to two hundred and ten pounds.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
So over the next few hours they continue this. They
continued sedating patients, and they continue bringing in the fire
chief so that he can do the antiquated method, which
of course squeezes oxygen out of everybody's lungs. And then
he brings forth a house painter, he brings forth mechanic,
he brings forth a secretary, and time and time again
(17:57):
they bring these people, using mouth to mouth right back
to healthy levels.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
With mouth to mouth breathing, reoxygenation can be accomplished within
seconds by deep inflations through an open airway.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
In October of nineteen fifty seven, Safford travels to Los
Angeles and he is delivering his results to a conference
of medical professionals.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
From around the world.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Instantly, people recognize it for what it is, which is
an incredible life saving innovation. He begins traveling the world.
He goes to every comment, he goes to every country.
He's showing his video to any place he can't go.
He's delivering lectures to anybody who will listen. And almost instantly,
the entire world just takes this thing and they run
with it. The Red Cross delivers the video, they make
(18:50):
copies of it, and they deliver it to the International
Red Cross, which disperses it everywhere. While he's traveling on
a world teaching rescue breathing.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
He cares it with chest repressions.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So his original innovation of rescue breeding now suddenly becomes.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
CPR as we know today. So for the first time.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
In human history, you could lean down next to your
neighbor and not only breathe for them, but also come
to their heart. All this is done by a.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Thirty three year old physician that the world did not
believe any when he first set out.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And a special thanks to Kevin Hazard for sharing Peter
Saffer's story with us. Saffer, by the way, would go
on to invent the modern day paramedic system in the
nineteen sixties. You can read all about that in Kevin
Hazard's terrific book American Sirens. Thanks also to our contributor
and producer John Elfner for editing and producing this story.
(19:50):
And my goodness, imagine these comparisons. Who are the people
who volunteered and what a salesman Saffer was to get
them to do it. The story Peter Saffer, the story
of CPR here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. CPR stands for
cardio pulmonary resurrection, and I might surprise you that it
was only invented in nineteen sixty. Here to tell the
story of the man who invented it. Peter Saffer is
Kevin Hazard, author of American Sirens, Take It Away.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Kevin Peter Saffer was born in nineteen twenties Vienna to
two physicians they met while they were dissecting bodies in
medical school. He grew up with this very bohemian existence,
and then in March of nineteen thirty eight, he and
his father are in the Vienna opera house. They come
(00:54):
out afterward. You know, he's young, he's a teenager. He's
feeling very excited about the world and what he find
when he steps out of the opera house this complete madness.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Are people waving.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Swastika flags in the street and chanting Jews out. That's
where he learns that the Nazis have swept across the
Austrian border. Within a couple of days, they've occupied Vienna,
completely changing his life. Because Saffer was a child of physicians,
(01:25):
he's protected from conscription into the German army by a
group of doctors, a group of friendly doctors who routinely
fake medical ailments for safer. Kids in Austria growing up
at that time are all going to be sent to
the Eastern Front, which is one of history's great meat grinders.
About eighty percent of the kids both above below and
(01:49):
in his high school class were all killed in the
Eastern Front. So had he been conscripted into the army
and sent east the fight in Russia, chances are he
would have been killed. And his family friends knew this,
and so they faked a number of illnesses in order
to keep him in the hospital and out of reach
of the army. Eventually, this goes on for so long
(02:10):
that the Army is, you know, chairman, Army is essentially
tricked into believing that this kid just has far too
many ailments, and he's released from any threat of conscription
and he's already in the hospital. So he begins working
as as an orderly and when the war is over
in nineteen forty five, he finishes his medical cooling. But
(02:32):
he now has a tremendous sense of guilt. So many
of the kids he grew up with are dead, and
they're dead because they didn't have powerful people to protect them.
And Stafford's alive, and he's alive because his parents had
enough connections to keep him hying.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
He swears to.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Himself that look, if all those people died and I lived,
and it had to be for a reason, and I
will find that reason, and I will work tirelessly throughout
my entire life to make good on this incredible miracle
that's been stowed upon me. Nineteen forty nine, he gets
an offer to go and study at Yale, leaves Vienna,
(03:09):
moves to the US. He encounters anestesiology, which at that
point is brand new, so brand new in fact that
where he comes from. In Vienna, if you're going to
have a surgery, what the doctor would do was soak
a rag and ether and place it over your mouth,
essentially hold it there until you stop kicking, and once
you suck resisting, then they remove the rag, begin surgery,
(03:33):
and if you start to wake up, they just put
the rag back over you again. That's anesthesiology where Saffer lives.
When he comes to the US, he sees drugs given
by IV, drugs given by endotrachio two, which is you know,
the two places down your throat and it's calibrated and
it's precise, and it's all brand new and exciting. So
he enters into anesthesiology. In nineteen fifty six, he comes
(03:58):
across this study was written by a Texas doctor named
James Elam. What the study says is that there's enough
oxygen in the air.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
You breathe out to keep somebody else alive.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Now this is important for Saffer for two reasons. One
is that at that point, conventional wisdom says that if
you breathe into somebody's mouth, you're gonna kill them with
all of your gases, You're gonna breathe out carbon dioxide
and it's just gonna poison their blood and it's gonna
kill them, whereas Elim is saying, no, no, there's gonna
(04:31):
be enough oxygen in this air to keep someone alive.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
And the second.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Is that Saffor has witnessed at this point what we
consider to be a rescue breathing and he knows instantly
that it doesn't work. In nineteen fifty six, if somebody
stop breathing and you're a medical professional, what you're trained
to do was roll a person over onto their face
by their shoulders and then press down on their shoulder blades.
(05:05):
Then you would lift up on their arms, and then
you would press down on their shoulder blades again. And
the idea here is that you're sort of flexing and
bowing their body in such a way that their lungs
are going to move almost by accident, and thereby sort
of let some air.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Squeak into their lungs. I mean, this.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Process really is like what you would do to a
Thanksgiving turkey. Saffer looks at this and he knows there's
no way that any oxygen is actually getting into anybody's
lungs this way, but he doesn't know what to do
about it, because there's no other method that somebody on
the street could use. Once you get into the hospital,
the doctors can can deliver oxygen through all sorts of
advanced ways, but someone at home, someone who witnesses another
(05:46):
person drop and stop breathing, they have nothing that they
can do. Saffire has been mulling this over, and he
comes across Helum's study, which the world has ignored for
two years. Saffer instantly recognizes.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
This is it.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
This can be the key to saving lives in the street.
What he wants to do is set up a series
of tests, and what the test will prove is that
not only does the back press arm lift method not work,
but that rescue breathing, the art of breathing into somebody
else's mouth deliver your oxygen into them will keep them alive.
(06:23):
So he recruits a number of volunteers. He goes around
to try to get funding, and every person he goes
to essentially says no. They don't want to give him
any money. They don't believe in what he's got to say,
and more importantly, they don't believe in him as a
thirty three year old doctor who's got a young family
and is trying to build a career. This is probably
(06:44):
the point at which he would.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Let go and say, Okay, well I tried. The world's
not going to listen to me.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
But again, Saffer is one of the very few people
who was saved during an incredibly violent time, and he's
desperate to make good on being kept alive, and so
he decides, forget, I'll just go ahead and do this
on my own. So even though he's never run a
test before, and even though he doesn't have any place
(07:09):
to do the test, he doesn't have any money to
do the test, and he doesn't have any way to
prove that what he says is in any way valid.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
He goes ahead and he schedules the test. There's two things.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
That Saffer needs to prove here. The first is that
arm lift back press doesn't work. The second is that
mouth and mouth does work. The obvious thing to do
would be to simply bring in a bunch of professionals
and have them do both armlift backpress and mouth and
(07:42):
mouth and just see what works and what doesn't work.
But Saffor doesn't simply want to prove that you could
do mouth and mouth. This is a technique that he
believes will save lives, not just a few lives, but
lives all over the world, and he thinks the only
way for that to happen is for ordinary people to
be actually the one is doing this job that when
somebody drops it, the person sitting next to them can
(08:04):
immediately begin saving their lives.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Because he recognizes that the time it's.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Going to take you to get to the hospital is
way too long, certainly for your brain to be saved
if you haven't been getting any oxygen. So what good
is just teaching a bunch of doctors this technique. He
needs to teach lay people this technique.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And you've been listening to Kevin Hazard tell the story
of how CPR came to be and the story of
Peter Saffer and how he was saved from certain death
by being helped and aided by doctors to keep him
out of conscription and out of the Nazi army. And
(08:43):
my goodness, what a day that must have been in
March of nineteen thirty eight, stepping out of the Vienna
Opera house only to see Nazi swarming the streets and
occupying this once great and powerful city, Vienna and the
entire country. When we come back more of the remarkable
(09:04):
story of Peter Saffer and how this thing called CPR
that saves countless lives each and every day. The story
of CPR and the story of Peter Saffer continues here
on our American stories, and we return to our American
(09:40):
stories and the story of Peter Saffer and the invention
of CPR. Here again is Kevin Hazard, author of American Sirens.
You'll also hear from Saffer himself Austrian accent and all.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
What he wants to do. He wants to recruit professionals
to do the old method. The method debt is accepted,
but that he's convinced is absolutely nothing. And he's going
to recruit a bunch of complete unknowns, children, some cases
as young as ten. He gets secretaries, he gets accountants,
(10:18):
he gets just ordinary people, people off the street, and
he's going to give them a ten second crash course
in how to do mouth them out and then let
them go and allow them to do it.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
He goes to doctors, he.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Goes to medical students, he goes to.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Nurses, and he says, Okay, here's what I want you
to do.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I'm going to pay you one hundred and fifty dollars
and you're gonna come and what I'm gonna do is,
I'm gonna sedate you, and then I'm going to paralyze
you unce you're unconscious. And then over the course of
several hours, while you are unconscious and unable to breathe,
I'm going to run this experiment on you. Record someone
(11:01):
doing the arm lift chest press on you, and we're
gonna see that that doesn't work. And when it doesn't work,
they're gonna back up and I'm gonna bring in a secretary.
I'm gonna bring in an eleven year old boy scount,
and then I'm gonna teach them how to do mouth
and mouth, and they're gonna keep you alive for the
remainder of this study. And this isn't gonna happen just once.
(11:23):
It's gonna happen forty nine different times. This sounds literally
like the world's worst sales pitch. Somebody's saying to you, Hey,
I'm gonna sedate you, paralyze you, use a method that
we both know doesn't work, to nearly kill you. And
then I'm gonna bring in someone who has no idea
what they're doing, and they're gonna.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Keep you alive. And we're gonna do this to you
multiple times.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
This is the guy who's very young, who's totally inexperienced,
who's trying to prove something that the world does not
believe is true. And he gets not one or ten
or twenty, but he gets thirty two different people to
agree to this.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
And these are enough desperate people. Again, these are medical
students or doctors and nurses.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
These are professionals, which shows you two things. One Saffer
is an incredibly perspuisive person and two They know he's right,
and they know that what he's doing is going to
save millions of lives, so they volunteer. The first test
was on Saturday, December.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Eighth, nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
At that point in time, Baltimore City Hospital was closed
on the weekends.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Saffer knew that every Saturday and.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Every Sunday he'd have an open or. He would bring
in a number of subjects, you know, maybe half a
dozen or so as many would fit in the room.
And then around the side he would have the chief
of the Baltimore Fire Department who would come in. That's
who's going to do the established method, this professional and
who's doing the.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Back press arm lift.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And then around the edges of the room is where
he has his laid people who are going to do
the experimental method in which Saffer wants to be able
to show the world because he knows that there's only
so much she can do as one person. He's not
going to be able to go everywhere and talk to everybody.
He needs a way to deliver this incredible piece of
life saving technology to the whole role. So he wants
(13:08):
to record this movie.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
The experimental study you are about to see during which
we compared various methods of artificial respiration by anesthetizing and
curarizing these subjects in order to simulate limp as phixia
victims by having untrained lay personnel perform some of these methods.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
He brings these people in, plays them on the floor,
starts an iv first thing he does is he gives
a sedative which knocks them out.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Now the subject is being rendered unconscious by the intravenous
injection of one milligram of scopolamine.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And once they're unconscious, he gives them a paralytic which
stops them from breathing.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
All muscles, including the respiratory muscles, will remain paralyzed for
the next three hours.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And then he begins mechanically ventilating them, which means he
gets a ventilator bag and he's just breathing for them,
and he calls over the firefighter.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Each of these people is on very.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Carefully calibrated machines to measure the depth of the rise
and fall of the chest with each different maneuver, and
also the oxygen level in their blood.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
The nemograph shows title volumes of two thousand miniters and more.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Saffer begins his tests and he sedates paralyzes his patients.
So at this point they're literally in respiratory arrest.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
They are not breathing.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
He begins mechanically ventilating them with a bag just to
keep oxygen in while he's getting everybody ready, and he
brings over the fire too. This is a man with
decades of experience. He's been doing this many many times.
He sits down and he begins doing the back press
armlift on the patients.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Now we will study they currently taught back pressure arm
lift method.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
And for the first time, the effectiveness of this procedure
is actually being measured.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
First, we study the chest pressure method with a subject
in the supine position. Now the restu is performing the
back pressure arm lift method as it was taught since
nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Saffra has this wonderful eye for drama, and he knows
that if people are going to be watching this video,
then he's got to be able to draw them in.
And so when he's doing the back press on left
method with the fire chief on the video, he allows
the man to oxygen level to drama, not to the
low nineties or the upper eighties, but all the way
down to eighties just continues.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
To fall and fall and fall.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
This is a point at which any emergency room in
the country would be springing.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
To action to save a patient.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
And Saffa's brought this person who ring down to the
brick no.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Air, but reaches the alveolfe, so there is almost zero
exchange and air is squeezed out of the lungs.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Forget that this isn't helping people, This mechanical procedure is
actually actively killing them. So they measure oxygen levels, swinging
down from ninety eight to ninety six to ninety one
to ninety.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
To eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Clearly it isn't working, so they pull them away.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Bag pressure armlift and chest pressure armlift methods of artificial
respiration proved unreliable.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
They roll the patient back over and then Saffor waves
and this ten year old child walks forward.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
This boy scout will perform mouth to airway breathing. He
weighs one hundred pounds.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Now on the ground before him he is a full
grown man about two hundred pounds, and incomes a boy scout.
He kneels down at the patient's head and Safire says, Okay,
here's what you're gonna do, and he gives him a
ten second.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Crash course on rescue.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Breathing, tild the head, pinch the nose, pull back on
the jaw, put your mouth on.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Breathe as hard as you can.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
The child leans forward, does everything, Saffre says, breathes out,
Nothing happens, chest doesn't rocky.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Nothing's going on.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Clearly oxygen was not delivered, so the kid sort of
repositions ahead, leans down.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
He has some difficulty that corrects himself.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
On video, leans down and immediately brings this patient back.
This video is incredibly dramatic and it's incredibly effective. Everyone
who sees it has blown away. Everybody's eyes shoot to
the monitors and the oxygens in love with those from
eighty seven, eighty nine to ninety two to ninety five.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
They can't believe. It just floats right back up.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Literally recording this, he was able to adequately ventilate subjects
weighing up to two hundred and ten pounds.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
So over the next few hours they continue this. They
continued sedating patients, and they continue bringing in the fire
chief so that he can do the antiquated method, which
of course squeezes oxygen out of everybody's lungs. And then
he brings forth a house painter, he brings forth mechanic,
he brings forth a secretary, and time and time again
(17:57):
they bring these people, using mouth to mouth right back
to healthy levels.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
With mouth to mouth breathing, reoxygenation can be accomplished within
seconds by deep inflations through an open airway.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
In October of nineteen fifty seven, Safford travels to Los
Angeles and he is delivering his results to a conference
of medical professionals.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
From around the world.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Instantly, people recognize it for what it is, which is
an incredible life saving innovation. He begins traveling the world.
He goes to every comment, he goes to every country.
He's showing his video to any place he can't go.
He's delivering lectures to anybody who will listen. And almost instantly,
the entire world just takes this thing and they run
with it. The Red Cross delivers the video, they make
(18:50):
copies of it, and they deliver it to the International
Red Cross, which disperses it everywhere. While he's traveling on
a world teaching rescue breathing.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
He cares it with chest repressions.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So his original innovation of rescue breeding now suddenly becomes.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
CPR as we know today. So for the first time.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
In human history, you could lean down next to your
neighbor and not only breathe for them, but also come
to their heart. All this is done by a.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Thirty three year old physician that the world did not
believe any when he first set out.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And a special thanks to Kevin Hazard for sharing Peter
Saffer's story with us. Saffer, by the way, would go
on to invent the modern day paramedic system in the
nineteen sixties. You can read all about that in Kevin
Hazard's terrific book American Sirens. Thanks also to our contributor
and producer John Elfner for editing and producing this story.
(19:50):
And my goodness, imagine these comparisons. Who are the people
who volunteered and what a salesman Saffer was to get
them to do it. The story Peter Saffer, the story
of CPR here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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