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Paul Maurice Zoll (July 15, 1911 – January 5, 1999)The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume 5: 1997-1999. Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002. was a Jewish American Cardiology and one of the pioneers in the development of the artificial cardiac pacemaker and cardiac defibrillator.
Zoll graduated from Boston Latin School in 1928. He followed his brother to Harvard College. He majored in psychology with aspirations of remaining in academics. Because his brother had problems securing a teaching position, his mother feared that he would suffer the same fate and suggested a career in medicine.
Zoll graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in 1932 and entered Harvard Medical School. Because of their high academic standing, he was able to spend a portion of his senior year engaged in cardiac research with Soma Weiss at the medical school.Zoll PM, Weiss S. Electrocardiographic changes in rats deficient in vitamin B1. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med 1936; 35: 259-62Weiss S, Haynes SW, Zoll PM. Electrocardiographic manifestations and the cardiac effects of drugs in vitamin B1 deficiency in rats. Am Heart J 1938; 15: 206-220
Zoll's mother died during his last year of medical school. That event had lasting personal repercussions; his mother was believed to suffer from rheumatic heart disease and from an underlying congenital heart defect. On several occasions, Mollie requested that a post-mortem autopsy be performed to clarify the cause when she died and to help others. Hyman disregarded his wife's wishes and his son's arguments because autopsy was a religious prohibition. Zoll dissociated himself from his religious roots and never returned.
After graduation in 1936, he interned at Beth Israel Hospital. He then completed a one-year medical residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and returned to Beth Israel Hospital as a Macy Research Fellow to study the pathophysiology of coronary disease.
Zoll was helped by several colleagues who shared his goals and worked by his side. They were Alan Belgard, his sole engineer; surgeon Leona Norman Zarsky, who directed the animal research laboratory; Arthur Linenthal, cardiac Pharmacology and electrophysiologist; and Howard Frank, thoracic surgeon and pioneering partner in implanting long-term pacemakers.
Zoll succeeded in preventing life-threatening disturbances of heart rhythm and in restoring effective heart action to victims about to die from sudden cardiac arrest. He accomplished these feats with the application of indirect and direct electrical shocks that restored a life-sustaining heart rhythm. Because of his methods, he has been called "The Father of Modern Cardiac Therapy".Stafford Cohen M.D. Paul Zoll MD; The Pioneer Whose Discoveries Prevent Sudden Death. . Salem, New Hampshire. Free People Publishing, 2014: P. X111 Still today there is an annual toll of approximately 450,000 sudden arrhythmic deaths in the USA alone.Kong MH, Fonorow GC, Peterson ED, Curtis AB, Hernandez A, Sanders GD, Thomas KL, Hays DL, AL-Khatib SM. Systematic review of the incidence of sudden death in the United States. JACC 2011; 57: 792-93 Zoll was a pioneer with a panoramic wide-angle view of his patient’s needs gleaned from his office and bedside hospital practice. During his career, Zoll equally divided his time between clinical care and research in his laboratory. His first in-the-world milestones resulted in paradigm shifts in cardiac care. Each conformed to the scientific "gold" standards with well-documented detailed published data of laboratory experiments and results in patients that were replicated by independent investigators. Among those milestones are chest surface pacing of an arrested heart in 1952;Zoll PM. Resuscitation of the heart in ventricular standstill by external electrical stimulation. N Engl J Med 1952; 249: 768-71 Clinical alarmed heart rhythm monitors in 1953;Engineering Staff of Fentosim Clinical Inc. History of physiological monitors. Fifty years of physiological monitors. http:// fentosimclinical,com/History%20of%20Physiologic%20Monitors chest surface electrical shock ("defibrillation") to terminate life-threatening ventricular fibrillation in 1956;Zoll PM, Linenthal AJ, Gibson W, Paul MH, Norman LR. Termination of Ventricular fibrillation in man by externally applied countershock. N Engl J Med 1956; 254: 727-32 installation of a Zoll-Belgard- Electrodyne self-contained long term pacemaker in a child in 1960;Zoll PM, Frank HA, Zarsky LRN, Linenthal AJ, Belgard AH. Long-term electrical stimulation of the heart for Stokes-Adams disease. Ann Surg 1961; 154:338 and the introduction of a new concept that permitted "painless" chest surface pacing in 1982.Zoll RH, Zoll PM, Belgard AH: Noninvasive cardiac stimulation. In Feruglio GA, editor: Cardiac Pacing: electrophysiology and pacemaker technology. Padua. Piccin Medical Books, 1983: P. 593-96Falk RH, Zoll PM, Zoll RH. Safety and efficacy of noninvasive pacing. A preliminary report. N Engl J Med 1983; 309: 1166-70 Zoll PM. Resuscitation of the heart….N Engl J Med 1952; 249: 768-71 The new device launched a small company that grew to be ZOLL Medical Corporation.
Zoll developed methods of applying electric shocks to the surface of the chest that stimulated the heart within. When the heart of his first clinical success ceased to beat because its native stimulus signal failed, Zoll saved the man by substituting a sequence of chest shocks produced by an experimental pacemaker borrowed from Otto Krayer of the Harvard Medical School Department of Physiology.Zoll PM. Resuscitation of the heart….N Engl J Med 1952; 249: 768-71Abelmann WH. Paul M Zoll and electrical stimulation of the heart. Profiles in Cardiology. Clin Cardiol 1986; 9: 131-35 The next year he collaborated with Alan Belgard, the chief electrical engineer and co-owner of the Electrodyne Company, to develop an efficient chest surface pacemaker to conform to Zoll's needs. That collaboration became long-term as together they developed production model chest surface pacemakers, clinical alarmed heart rhythm monitors, chest surface defibrillators, cardiac monitor-automatic pacemakers, and long-term implantable self-contained pacemakers.
He retired from practice in 1993. During his more than fifty years of active practice and research, Zoll received many awards and honors.
Janet died in 1978. Three years later, Zoll married Ann Blumgart Gurewich. Zoll died from pneumonia on January 5, 1999.
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