Tossach, William

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. c. 1700 probably Perthshire, Scotland

d. after 1771 Alloa, Scotland

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Scottish surgeon, the first to report a case of artificial respiration by mouth.

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Little is known of Tossach (a Tossach matriculated at Glasgow University in 1727), but in 1771 he published an account of the resuscitation of a miner, James Blair, who had been rescued from a coal-mine fire. Tossach found "there was not the least pulse in either heart or arteries and not the least breathing could be observed; so that he was in all appearance dead, I applied my mouth close to his, and blowed my breath as strong as I could: but having neglected to close his nostrils all the air came out of them: Wherefore taking hold of them with one hand and holding my other on his breast at the left pap I blew again my breath as strong as I could, raising his chest fully with it; and immediately I felt six or seven very quick beats of the heart." Blair recovered consciousness in an hour and walked home within four.

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Bibliography

1771, "A man dead in appearance recovered by distending the lungs with air", Medical Essays and Observations, Edinburgh.

Further Reading

1794, Transactions of the Royal Humane Society from 1774–1784, London. J.P.Griffin, 1990, "The origins of the Royal Humane Society", Journal of the Royal

Society of Medicine 83.

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