The development of any scientific field, its actual state of knowledge and applied skills is a very dynamic action consisting of individual events. Experience, observations and discoveries emerge and immerse either to outlast, to be quite forgotten or to be discovered again. Only a particular achieved degree of development of human society and its knowledge enables these items to be put together like stones into a mosaic to be yield in a new quality. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation underwent a stormy development during the last decades and this process still continues. It interferes with the majority of medical fields and its component – the basic life support – is even taught in the society and practiced daily by laymen and the general public. All this would not be possible without the basic knowledge and the corresponding development in medical sciences, in the methodology of scientific knowledge and advances in the exchange of information. But at the same time the ideas and works of the past that influenced the thinking of individuals and generations played a significant role in this process. This article gives a survey of the development of resuscitation methods and attempts of the prehistoric period to the end of the 17th century and refers to some ideas, personalities, events and facts that interfered with the development of the art of resuscitation. The text is part of work consisting of several articles devoted to the subsequent development of resuscitation in the18th (History of resuscitation II.), 19th (History of resuscitation III.) and 20th (History of resuscitation IV.) centuries. The article contains information obtained due to the Wood Library-Museum Fellowship 2000.

        Key words: history – historical article – resuscitation – development – life – death – tracheotomy – artificial ventilation – prehistory – Egypt – Bible – antiquity – Galenos – middle ages – arabic medicine – renaissance – Vesalius – 17th century – Harvey