[1] Joseph P. O'Dwyer was born on October 12, 1841, in Cleveland, Ohio, and was educated in London, Ontario.

After two years of apprenticeship in the office of one Dr. Anderson, he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York from which he was graduated in 1865.

He won first place in the competitive examination for resident physicians of New York's Charity Hospital, on Blackwell's Island.

In 1858, Paris pediatrician Eugene Bouchut devised a method to bypass the diphtheria pseudomembrane obstructing the larynx without resorting to a tracheotomy.

However, Bouchut's proposal was not well received, due in part to the opposition of Armand Trousseau, the known authority on tracheotomies.

[4] The use of tracheotomy had fallen into disrepute at the Foundling Hospital with a record 100% death rate,[2] among children due to suffocation when diphtheria brought about closure of the larynx.

O’Dwyer's tubes and method was quickly adopted by American physicians and became the first widely used endotracheal technique.

[7] His tubes and the accompanying instruments for intubation and extubation, with his methods for the care of these patients, came to be employed throughout the medical world, gradually reducing the use of tracheotomy for croup, and thereby "leading to a significant reduction in the death rate".

[4] Bouchut and O'Dwyer met in Berlin in 1890 at the X International Congress of Medicine which focused on laryngeal intubation, and where both acknowledged the other's contribution to the development of the procedure.

Known for his charities, Dr. O'Dwyer had declined to patent his invention, thereby sacrificing large pecuniary gains.

[10] O'Dwyer did not make much money from the development of his intubation method and according to his friend Northrup, "died poor".

[9] The trustees of Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons established the O'Dwyer Scholarship to provide for the education of his son and namesake, which then was allowed to lapse upon Joseph Jr.'s graduation.

[9] O'Dwyer introduced the use of tubes in children with diphtheritic pseudomembranes in the larynx, to substantially increase their survival chances at a time when tracheotomy still had a high failure rate.