A New Biography by Stafford Cohen MD
Through carefully documented historical analysis, Dr. Stafford Cohen presents a panoramic view of Paul Zoll (1911-1999) and his discoveries that were the ancestors of life saving implements commonly used today. This biography positions Zoll as the leading pioneer in preventing and treating life-threatening heart arrhythmias. His innovations changed the field. Zoll was the first in the world to electrically pace or defibrillate an arrested heart from the surface of the chest; the first in the world to alarm clinical cardiac monitors; the first USA coronary care unit used Zoll’s machines. He assisted in implanting the world’s second long term fully-contained pacemaker—which he helped to develop.
Although the biography focuses on Dr. Zoll as the leading pioneer, it includes an international cast of workers who shared in the mission of maintaining and restoring life to the otherwise soon to be dead. There is an abundant exploration of courageous doctors and their desperate patients with life-threatening arrhythmias who volunteer to undergo untried or preliminary treatments. There is the woman who was the first in the world with a long-term pacer to give birth, the eight-year-old first child in the world to have a long-term pacemaker, and others who present poignant examples of revival.
The book should be of interest to all who work directly in the medical establishment or in allied health fields, to the multitude of patients with implanted pacemakers or defibrillators (and their caretakers), to the well-educated curious, to the many who had a cardiac monitor applied during general anesthesia, to graduates of a basic life-support course, and to trained first responders or citizen responders.
Paul Zoll has a permanent, prominent place in medical history. In recognition of his discoveries, Zoll received the prestigious Albert Lasker Award— America’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Yet, in spite of his long-term battle with this important public health menace, electrically deranged hearts still take a toll of 1,000 lives lost daily in the USA.
The author, Dr. Stafford I. Cohen was a medical resident under Dr. Zoll at the former Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and later a cardiology colleague, office mate, and friend.
For more information, visit www.staffordcohenmd.com.