Everyone knows the name on the diner choking poster, but the story of Dr. Henry Heimlich swings wildly between genuine medical heroism and dangerous pseudoscience. From improvising a trachoma cure with shaving cream in the Gobi Desert to inventing the chest drainage flutter valve that saved wounded soldiers in Vietnam, he showed real ingenuity, often wrapped in dramatic backstories that colleagues later disputed.

His anti-choking abdominal thrust became standard protocol after he bypassed peer review and went straight to the media, but his hubris turned deadly with unproven drowning claims and a condemned malaria therapy tested on vulnerable subjects in Ethiopia. His own son Peter dedicated years to exposing what he called a decades-long history of fraud.

• The mechanics behind the flutter valve and the abdominal thrust explained ...