References to using hypothermia to preserve living tissue date back to Hippocrates, who advocated packing bleeding patients in snow.114 Wilfred Bigelow first showed that blood flow could be entirely arrested in cooled animals without deleterious effects.115 This discovery allowed procedures to be performed on a stopped heart in a blood-free environment, which made modern cardiac surgery possible. In fact, using a technique devised by Charles
Drew in which patients were cooled to 15°C, Ronald Belsey performed human cardiac surgery without any circulation for 60 minutes (the perfusionist would step out of the operating room) without deleterious cerebral consequences.116,117 The utility of hypothermia in resuscitation was initially appreciated but fell out of favor