RESUSCITATION OF THE STOPPED HEART BY INTRACARDIAC THERAPY

Abstract

No procedure in modern medicine has aroused more controversial thought than the attempt to revive the dead. Hailed on the one hand as a miracle of science and on the other as a useless and dangerous operation,¹the intracardiac injection method of resuscitating the stopped heart has occupied a stage of excited debate. The dramatic circumstances attending the revival of those supposedly dead readily lends itself to exploitation by both the lay and the medical press. The subject is naturally one of appealing interest, touching as it does on two fundamental concepts of philosophic thought—life and death. The increasing use of epinephrine for intracardiac injection in emergency conditions arising in the operating room and in the physician's office has been attended with such inconstant results that many surgeons and physicians are at a loss in evaluating the efficacy of this procedure, individual experience having rendered them either enthusiastic advocates or