Rudolph Boehm

German physiologist credited by two independent secondary historical reviews as the first to demonstrate that external chest compression alone restores circulation, in living cats in the 1870s–80s — roughly 80 years before Kouwenhoven's Johns Hopkins group's 1958 "accidental" rediscovery of the same mechanism. He matters to the vault because he anchors the earliest documented precedent the accidental-discovery narrative should be measured against. One source spells his name "Bohem"; treated here as the same referent.

References

• claim-external-chest-compression-demonstrated-decades-before-kouwenhovens-1958-accident
• Captures: 2026-07-30-read-kouwenhoven-jude-knickerbocker-closed-chest-cardiac-massage