100th anniversary of a pioneer in anaesthesia

"Actually, it's not that hard to solve problems. The hard part is finding the problem - and to recognise that 'Here is a problem'". These are the words of Henning Ruben, a true innovator, from an interview in 1982. This Sunday July 20, 2014, he would have turned 100 years.

Henning Ruben, professor of anaesthesiology at the University of Copenhagen, was a man of many talents. Initially a trained dentist, Henning Ruben was, at various times, a professional dancer, mental magician, master swordsman and tireless inventor. Henning Ruben is famous for the invention of the Ruben valve, the foot-suction pump and the self-inflating Ambu® BagTM.

Performance arts or health care
As a young man in the 1930'ies, Henning Ruben toured Denmark with his dance partner, Raquel Rastenni, who would later become a popular singer. And Henning Rubens's career could have been in a completely different business. "I seriously considered becoming a music hall performer. Those were jolly times and our dancing was in demand, but my common sense took the upper hand. Not that I wasn't a skilled dancer, but I had an urge to do something more future-proof".

And so, at the age of 20, Henning Ruben began studying, and after three years he was a dentist. He went straight on to study medicine - alongside his job as a dentist - and went into anaesthesia as his area of specialty.

A meeting of minds
In 1953, Henning Ruben met Holger Hesse, the founder of Ambu. Holger Hesse was an engineer with a talent for putting ideas into practice. Ruben and Hesse shared a passion for inventiveness and a fruitful collaboration - as well as a deep friendship - developed between them.

The story behind the Ambu Bag - which is Ruben's most famous invention - is that Ruben asked his bicycle mechanic to weld together four bicycle wheel spokes and he then manipulated them into an anaethesia bag. The spokes kept the bag expanded so that when it was compressed by hand it would self-expand and refill with air. This was the core idea - to be able to ventilate an injured person without the use of oxygen supply or electricity.

Holger Hesse saw the prototype and liked the idea, but suggested the bicycle spokes be replaced with rubber foam. And so the Ambu Bag was born. It revolutionised resuscitation almost 60 years ago and is still used every day all over the world. The Ambu Bags of today contain neither bicycle spokes nor rubber foam, however, the principle of self-inflation remains the same.

A tenacious inventor
Henning Ruben had a long and successful career and received many honours both in Denmark and abroad. He died at the age of 90 in 2004, leaving his wife, Vera, four children and seven grandchildren.

His tenacity - and a key to his skill as an inventor - can be found in his own words. "The thing is that some people just curse at a problem, while others keep wondering how it can be solved. This may be what separates inventors from other people. Because I think that everyone has a sum of talents, but some people only use their skills a little, while others, like me, squeeze the orange to the last drop."


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