The concept of ventilatory support is not new. It has been reported that BC Egyptians and Greeks described the theories of respiration. The Old Testament (800 BC) tells us that the Prophet Elisha induced mouth to mouth pressure breathing in a dying child! Much later, in the sixteenth century Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, or the “Famoso Doctor” Paracelsus, also known as the “wandering spirit,” used the fire bellows of the time as devices for assisted ventilation: they were connected to the patients by a tube inserted in the mouth. In the following centuries, medical pioneers such as Vesalius, Hooke, Fathergill, and Hunter, among others, continued to advance the concept of ventilatory support, while others in the engineering field developed devices to expand its application.