The treatment of asphyxia neonatorum was rarely mentioned in American medical literature until the second half of the last century. A few anecdotal papers were published in the early 1800's, including one by Dr. Gilbert Smith, Physician and Surgeon to the New York Almshouse. His "new method" was described as follows1:
About three years since I was called upon to attend a lady with her first child; it being a breech presentation, the labor was of course tedious and the head was retained such an unusual length of time after the body was delivered, that, apprehending the most serious consequences, I directed a warm bath to be in readiness, into which the child was placed immediately after delivery. At this time there was no pulsation in the chord [sic], or the smallest sign of life. Its legs and spine were frequently rubbed with stimulating applications, which I was assiduously employed in endeavoring to excite action in the lungs by breathing into them, and pressing out the air alternately. This process was carried out for the unprecedented period of two hours, when my strength failing, I was upon the point of discontinuing any farther effort as useless; when one of the attendants, by whose importunity I was, perhaps, induced to persevere for such a length of time, proposed by taking some brandy and water; after having drank, I resumed my labors, when the idea forcibly struck me that the alcohol might be volatilized by the heat of the mouth and breathed into the lungs.
