U.S. National Library of Medicine.
During this project, decompression sickness became known as "The Grecian Bends" or simply "the bends" because affected individuals characteristically bent forward at the hips: this is possibly reminiscent of a then popular womens fashion and dance maneuver known as the Grecian Bend. 1890 During construction of the Hudson River Tunnel contractors agent Ernest William Moir pioneered the use of an airlock chamber for treatment. 1900: Leonard Hill used a frog model to prove that decompression causes bubbles and that recompression resolves them. Hill advocated linear or uniform decompression profiles. This type of decompression is used today by saturation divers. His work was financed by Augustus Siebe and the Siebe Gorman Company. 1904: Tunnel building to and from Manhattan Island caused over 3,000 injuries and over 30 deaths which led to laws requiring PSI limits and decompression rules for "sandhogs" in the United States. 1904: Siebe and Gorman in conjunction with Leonard Hill developed and produced a closed bell in which a diver can be decompressed at the surface. 1908: "The Prevention of Compressed Air Illness" was published by JS Haldane, Boycott and Damant recommending staged decompression. These tables were accepted for use by the Royal Navy. 1914–16: Experimental decompression chambers were in use on land and aboard ship. 1924: The US Navy published the first standardized recompression procedure. 1930s: Albert R Behnke separated the symptoms of Arterial Gas Embolism (AGE) from those of DCS. 1935: Behnke et al. experimented with oxygen for recompression therapy. 1937: Behnke introduced the "no-stop" decompression tables.