Hearts Too Good to Die: Claude S. Beck’s Contributions to Life-Saving

Author: Timmermans S.²

Source: The Journal of Historical Sociology, Volume 14, Number 1, March 2001 , pp. 108-131(24)

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

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Abstract:

This paper explores the role of Western Reserve University cardiac surgeon Claude S. Beck in convincing the world of the merits of electric defibrillation to treat the life-threatening heart arrhythmia ventricular fibrillation. Before Beck, the method of electric defibrillation had been experimentally explored at least four times but it never caught on as a medical or first-aid life-saving technique. Beck succeeded because he synchronized three activities: he refined the technique and provided clinical applications, he built a communication infrastructure, and he formulated a vision of who should use the technique under what kind of circumstances.

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 2:

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