 In 1854, a Spanish singing teacher named Manuel García (1805 – 1906) became the first man to view the functioning glottis in a living human. In 1858, French pediatrician Eugène Bouchut (1818 – 1891) developed a new technique for non-surgical orotracheal intubation to bypass laryngeal obstruction resulting from a diphtheria-related pseudomembrane. In 1880, Scottish surgeon William Macewen (1848 – 1924) reported on his use of orotracheal intubation as an alternative to tracheotomy to allow a patient with glottic edema to breathe, as well as in the setting of general anesthesia with chloroform. In 1895, Alfred Kirstein (1863 – 1922) of Berlin first described direct visualization of the vocal cords, using an esophagoscope he had modified for this purpose; he called this device an autoscope.
