Saving lives should not require permission

When did saving a life start to feel like breaking the rules? When did the doctor at the bedside become less trusted than the people making decisions from far away, such as administrators, regulators, or distant experts who have never met the patient? And how did a profession built on judgment, uncertainty, and moral responsibility end up rewarding people for just following orders?

These aren't just abstract questions. They decide who can act when someone is dying, and who gets blamed if the official plan fails.

The apparently dead did not need permission

Amsterdam, 1767. A body is pulled from a city canal. The victim is still, not breathing, and shows no clear sign of life. Most people assume the person is dead. But a small group of citizens and doctors started to ask a new question: What if this person only looks dead? What if death is sometimes a process that can be stopped? And if there is even a small chance of life, do we have a duty to try to help?

This idea led to the first Humane Society, a group focused on rescuing and reviving people who seemed to have drowned. In fourteen months, they reported saving nineteen people. By 1793, they said they had rescued 990 lives over twenty-five years.[1] These numbers might not meet the standards of a modern clinical trial, but the idea behind them changed medicine: apparent death did not always have to be the end.

The idea spread fast. Humane Societies popped up in cities like Venice, Milan, Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Glasgow. These weren't just private clubs or government agencies. They were groups of volunteers (doctors, clergy, apothecaries, soldiers, boatmen, scientists, philanthropists, and regular people), working together to save lives. Historians now call them a transnational movement that shared medical knowledge across borders.[2]

Something very similar to what Brownstone Institute is today. Before there were international health organizations or emergency medical systems, these societies compared notes, shared tips, gave out rewards for rescues, and encouraged everyone to help. Their guiding idea was simple, even if it sounds bold today: if a life is at risk, the person who can help has the responsibility to act.

In London, the movement took on a special character. In 1774, doctors William Hawes and Thomas Cogan met with 32 friends at the Chapter Coffee House in St. Paul's Churchyard to start what would become the Royal Humane Society. Hawes had already been paying boatmen out of his own pocket to bring drowning victims in quickly so resuscitation could be tried.

This was not a government project or a plan from professional managers. It was simply a group of people deciding that giving up was not good enough. Someone pulled from the water might look dead, and experts might say there was no hope. Still, there could be a chance for life, and someone should try to save it.[1]

Experts, bellows, and tobacco smoke

Their methods were a mix of smart ideas, wild guesses, and desperate attempts. Victims were warmed, rubbed, shaken, bled, made to vomit, given mouth-to-mouth breaths, and exposed to heat and electricity. Believe it or not, tobacco smoke was even blown into the rectum using special devices, some kept in barbershops and other public places.

That might sound almost comical now, but there's a real lesson here. The same people who helped make artificial ventilation a real medical practice also believed a tobacco enema could save a life. They were brave, but sometimes wrong. That's not a knock on science. It's how science actually works. Medicine moves forward when people try things, see what happens, learn from mistakes, and aren't afraid to change course. It doesn't move forward just because a committee says all the uncertainty is gone.

The Humane Societies became places where different medical ideas competed. The Dutch supported mouth-to-mouth ventilation, but many leading British doctors looked down on it. William Hunter called it something done by "the vulgar," and some worried that exhaled air was toxic and could not revive anyone.[1] Still, this simple method used by regular people was actually closer to modern resuscitation than the more complex techniques favored by experts.

This does not mean expertise is useless. It means that authority and truth are not the same. Expertise deserves respect when it stays open to new evidence and correction, but it becomes risky when status is used to shut down questions.