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

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.