[Thoracic surgery: history and present status (author's transl)].

Following adoption of the differential airways pressure principle (Sauerbruch), continuous positive airway pressure breathing, together with earlier physiological and clinical preliminary reports on artificial lung ventilation, was a major step on the way to intratracheal anesthesia, which was brought to perfection only after World War II. Up to then, the earlier method that Sauerbruch had used in his pioneer work had been prevalent in thoracic surgery. Since Sauerbruch's death, surgery of the heart and thoracic vessels has developed most successfully, while pulmonary tuberculosis now has hardly any surgical significance.