Edmund Goodwyn

[2] He advanced early important arguments in favor of artificial ventilation for the treatment of asphyxia over alternative resuscitation measures of the time, like heat and exsanguination.

[1] This phenomenon was in part sparked by Jacques-Bénigne Winslow’s (1669–1760) The Uncertainty of the Signs of Death and the Danger of Precipitate Interments and Dissections,[6] published in 1740, which claimed the existence of death-like state often referred to as “suspended animation.” In addition, it argued that victims to these conditions should not be pronounced dead, nor buried, until their bodies demonstrated overt putrefaction.

[1] His experimental work aimed to identify the physiological hallmark of drowning, which he accomplished by removing the sternum from cats, dogs, rabbits, toads, and lizards in order to observe the changes in blood color inside the pulmonary arteries and veins during conditions of asphyxia.

[1]  In some experiments Goodwyn even used a blow pipe to ventilate the lungs of lifeless, experimentally drowned, toads and lizards, inducing their "black" pulmonary blood to become florid, and their hearts to resume beating.

[4][1] Thus Goodwyn provided experimental evidence to support the use of artificial ventilation over alternative resuscitation methods of the time, which included heat, electricity, exsanguination, tobacco smoke, and the application of various vapors and creams to the skin and intestines.

He wrote:“…if we allow to these remedies all the efficacy that partiality can claim, it can only be said, that they sometimes produce by indirect means, what may be always done directly by [artificial lung inflation] …”[4] In addition, Goodwyn disproved the notion that pulmonary blood flow slowed to a halt during the exhalation phase of respiration by demonstrating that the volume of air expired during a normal respiratory cycle was too small to reshape the lungs to a degree that impedes blood flow.