The Connection of Life with Respiration: Edmund Goodwyn’s unexplored treasure of cardiopulmonary physiology

The advent of artificial ventilation was largely sparked by the popular belief that drowning and other causes of asphyxia could induce death-like states known as suspended animation. While the mystical nature of such states befuddled some physicians into the early 1900s, an English medical student by the name of Edmund Goodwyn (1756–1829) published a thesis in 1786, which demonstrated that suspended animation was simply the physical manifestation of extreme hypoxia. Goodwynʼs work advanced one of the earliest arguments in favor of artificial ventilation for the treatment of asphyxia over alternative resuscitation measures like heat and exsanguination. In addition, Goodwyn’s remarkable dissertation contains the first account of a reflex known as diving bradycardia, and possibly the first vehement refutation of claims by his contemporaries that pulmonary circulation stopped during exhalation. While miscellaneous aspects of his thesis have occasionally been mentioned by a few medical historians, the overall visionary nature of his work has yet to be recognized. This article attempts to accomplish this goal and to provide a first biographical glimpse of a man whose scientific career appears to have ended prematurely, perhaps because of his profound aversion to controversy.