1975 Heimlich Maneuver “The list of first-aid procedures that the medical profession encourages laypeople to undertake is short because of concern that tactics applied in ignorance may do more harm than good. Now, however, the American Medical Association has cautiously endorsed the ‘Heimlich maneuver’ as a first-aid procedure when someone is choking on a foreign object, described by Henry J. Heimlich, the Cincinnati surgeon who developed it.