One of the most startling ideas of modern medicine is that "sudden death" may be reversed; however, this idea was not reached easily. In its earliest forms, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is probably as old as the human being. The evolution of CPR represents, as does the evolution of medicine as a whole, a history of human error and human discovery. Although it is common to ascribe the development of CPR to Kouwenhoven and colleagues at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in fact they refined and popularized a method that had been evolving over several millennia. This paper reviews the most important advances in resuscitation prior to the 20th century.