Volume 18 , Issue 20

NW Okie's Journey

Last week we donated our time to our (C)Kouwenhoven genealogy, especially John A. Kouwenhoven [Kouwenhoven had several different spellings of its surname. Couwenhoven, Couvenhoven and Conover. ] The (C)Kouwenhoven surname could be found with "Van" in front of it. That's another story, though. And ... John (Janse, Jan) was a common family name used throughout the Kouwenhoven ancestry. As well as the name of Gerritt, which had various spellings, also: Garrett, Gerrett).

We have come across some more information about John Kouwenhoven. Such as, Dr. John B. Kouwenhoven was president of the Yonkers Academy of Medicine and owned a home in Dorset, Vermont, just 8 miles from Pawsley where English professor John A. Kouwenhoven lived and retired. Dr. John B.'s home was constructed of two homes he saved when he relocated them from the flood zone created by the planned Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts. Folks were so impressed by his efforts that he became involved in relocating other houses for clients of a non-medical venture he created to facilitate the moving of the structures.

WILLIAM B. KOUWENHOVEN (January 13, 1886 - November 10, 1975)
Dorset Vermont Chamber of Commerce. And, it seems a William B. Kouwenhoven is credited with the invention of the defibrillator and development of the method of CPR. The Virtual EMS Museum -- Johns Hopkins celebrates 50 years of CPR with the story of Drs. Kouwenhoven, Jude and Kinckerbocker. A heart stops, setting in motion the entire Chain of Survival- Early 911 Access, Early CPR, Early Defibrillation, and Early Advanced Care. It all starts with the three gentlemen on the right- Dr. James Jude, Dr. William Kuowenhoven and Dr. Guy Knickerbocker.

Dr. Kouwenhoven and Dr. Knickerbocker invent the defibrillator in 1957, discover the benefit of closed chest compression with Dr. James Jude in 1958, and adding Dr. Peter Safars' work with rescue breathing, create CardioPulmonary Resuscitation in 1960.

Kouwenhoven was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 13, 1886, graduated '06 with a degree in electrical engineering from Polytechnic University, and then joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Engineering in 1914 as a professor of electrical engineering.

The first investigations were done on rats in 1928. They found that high voltage shocks from electrodes placed on the head and one extremity would stop breathing and the heart from pumping. They also tried to massage the chests of the rats, as recommended by a German physician, Dr. Boehn, but this only resulted in paralysis of the rats from crushed cervical spines. By 1933, their work on dogs showed that an alternating electrical current applied directly to the heart could restore the heartbeat but this method required opening the dog’s chest, which was difficult and less than desirable. In the late 1940s this method of open chest heart re-starting (defibrillation) became used on human patients quite regularly because it was the only option available to save patients’ lives.

Kouwenhoven concentrated on developing a method to shock the heart without opening the chest. His research was put on hold during World War II, but by 1957, Kouwenhoven and his team had perfected the defibrillator, consisting of a small box and two insulated cables with copper electrodes. Johns Hopkins Hospital immediately began using the device as a standard treatment for cardiac arrest.

Kouwenhoven and Knickerbocker worked with cardiac surgeon, James Jude to test this life sustaining theory on many patients for over a year before announcing the results of their discovery: Chest compressions could maintain 40% of a patient’s normal circulation when their heart had stopped beating. This was combined with mouth to mouth resuscitation to become universally known as Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR. They also found that they could extend the time to successful defibrillation and survival of a dog to over an hour with external massage by way of chest compressions. The first documented, successful case of their method being used on a human patient, a 35 year old woman, was in July 1959. Recalled by Jude: "She was rather an obese female who … went into cardiac arrest as a result of flurothane anesthetic. This woman had no blood pressure, no pulse, and ordinarily we would have opened up her chest. Instead, since we weren’t in the operating room, we applied external cardiac massage. Her blood pressure and pulse came back at once. We didn’t have to open her chest. They went ahead and did the operation on her, and she recovered completely."

For his remarkable contributions to cardiology, in 1969 Kouwenhoven received the first-ever honorary Doctor of Medicine from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

The Quabbin House Tour
‘Quabbin Houses’ were buildings in the Swift River Valley that were moved or razed to allow for the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts.

Charles A. Wade, a builder from Dorset, Vermont, took advantage of the interest in colonial and early-nineteenth-century American history that flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as the inexpensive building supply of the Swift River Valley, and offered to find authentic New England houses and move them to the locations of the buyers’ choice.

Good Night! Good Luck!
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