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.
Reduction in decompression requirements can also be gained by breathing a nitrox mix during the dive, since less nitrogen will be taken into the body than during the same dive done on air.Following a decompression schedule does not completely protect against DCS. The algorithms used are designed to reduce the probability of DCS to a very low level, but do not reduce it to zero. The mathematical implications of all current decompression models are that provided that no tissue is ingassing, longer decompression stops will decrease decompression risk, or at worst not increase it. Efficient decompression requires the diver to ascend fast enough to establish as high a decompression gradient, in as many tissues, as safely possible, without provoking the development of symptomatic bubbles. This is facilitated by the highest acceptably safe oxygen partial pressure in the breathing gas, and avoiding gas changes that could cause counterdiffusion bubble formation or growth. The development of schedules that are both safe and efficient has been complicated by the large number of variables and uncertainties, including personal variation in response under varying environmental conditions and workload, attributed to variations of body type, fitness and other risk factors. Exposure to altitude
One of the most significant breakthroughs in the prevention of altitude DCS is oxygen pre-breathing.