Oesophageal Atresia with Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula

The first reported case of esophageal atresia with a tracheo-esophageal fistula was reported by Thomas Gibson from England, in his Anatomy of Humane Bodies Epitomized in 1697.
Gibson writes;
About November 1696 I was sent for to an infant that would not swallow. The child seem'd very desirous of food, and took what was offer'd it in a spoon with greediness; but when it went to swallow it, it was like to be choked, and what should have gone down returned by the mouth and nose, and it fell into a struggling convulsive sort of fit; but the next day died.
The parents being willing to have it opened, I took two physicians and a surgeon with me... We blew a pipe down the gullet, but found no passage for the wind into the stomach.
Then we made a slit in the stomach, and put a pipe into its upper orifice, and blowing, we found the wind had a vent, but not by the top of the gullet.
Then we carefully slit open the back side of the gullet from the stomach upwards, and when we were gone a little above half way towards the pharnyx we found it hollow no further. Then we began to slit it open from the pharnyx downward, and it was hollow till within an inch of the other slit, and in the imperforate part of was narrower than in the hollowed.
This isthmux (as it were) did not seem ever to have been hollow, for in the bottom of the upper, and the top of the lower cavity, there was not the least print of any such thing, but the parts were here as smooth as the bottom of an acorn-cup.
Then searching what way the wind had passed when we blow from the stomach upwards, we found an oval hole (half and inch long) on the fore-side of the gullet opening into the aspera arteria a little above its first division, just under the lower part of the isthmus above mentioned.

The first operation was performed by Charles Steele of London in 1888 and reported in the Lancet of 20 October 1888. The baby did not survive.