First recorded use of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation

The earliest documented instance of a person being revived by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (also known as "expired-air respiration") took place on 3 December 1732 in the Clackmannanshire town of Alloa in Scotland, UK. The incident was described by surgeon William Trossach in volume 5, part 2 of the Edinburgh Society's Medical Essays and Observations, published in 1744.

The patient was a man called James Blair, who had been one of the first to descend into a coal mine following a fire. He had been overwhelmed by fumes and collapsed at the bottom of a long ladder. William Trossach estimated that Blair lay in the mine for between 30 and 45 minutes, before being pulled back out by a second rescue team. When he reached the surface, he was not breathing and had no detectable pulse.

Dr Trossach began performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as soon as Blair was brought up, and was able to detect a very faint pulse after a few breaths. He continued for a little longer, until Blair began breathing unaided. Although breathing again, Blair remained unresponsive and cold to the touch, with his eyes open and motionless.

As the stricken man gave no indication that he would regain consciousness, Dr Trossach followed up his correct impulse with a few more dubious treatments from the arsenal of an eighteenth-century physician. This included bleeding the man, massaging his body ("to assist the motion of the blood") and administering sal volatile (a powerful-smelling solution of ammonium carbonate in alcohol).

After an hour, Blair's eyes began to move and eventually he yawned and regained consciousness. He was disoriented, and had no awareness that any time had passed since he'd collapsed the mine, but was otherwise fine. Within a week, he was back at work, with no apparent ill-effects aside from pain in he back from being dragged up the ladder by his rescuers.

Although this is the first unambiguous appearance of the practice in medical literature, William Trossach can't really be called the inventor of expired-air respiration. It is thought that it has been employed by midwives since time immemorial, but the details of their work rarely appeared in written records.

Though it does not appear to have made much of an impact at the time of publication, interest in Trossach's paper was revived in the 1770s by people involved in what became known as "humane societies". These were groups of volunteers that appeared in London, Amsterdam, and a few other places in the late 18th century dedicated to trying to revive victims of drowning.