When a physician in an emergency room in 2024 decides to continue treating a hypothermic patient despite a clinical presentation that would otherwise suggest futility, they are, in a small and indirect way, acting on the accumulated evidence of cases like Jean Hilliard’s.

The evidence that survival is possible, that the apparent death of severe hypothermia can be reversed with treatment, that the body can come back from temperatures and clinical states that look final — this evidence is what the “warm and dead” principle rests on, and Jean Hilliard is part of that evidence.

The Gordon Giesbrecht research program at the University of Manitoba — the work done by “Professor Popsicle” on human physiological responses to cold — has been central to the development of the scientific basis for current cold-weather survival protocols.

His research has quantified the rates at which humans lose heat in different environments, characterized the physiological stages of hypothermia with greater precision than was available in 1980, and developed practical guidance for the treatment of cold injuries in wilderness and emergency settings.