George Poe, Jr. | |
|---|---|
 Poe and Arthur Ostrander, 1907 | |
| Born | May 8, 1846 Elkridge Landing, Maryland, US |
| Died | February 3, 1914 (aged 67) |
| Relatives | Edgar Allan Poe, cousin |
George Poe, Jr. (May 8, 1846 – February 3, 1914) was a pioneer of mechanical ventilation of asphyxiation victims. [1] [2] He was the first person to manufacture nitrous oxide for commercial use. [3] [4] [5]
He was the son of George Poe Sr. and Elizabeth Ross Ellicott, who married on December 14, 1835. [6] [7] [8] Around 1885 he married Margaret Amy Wallace and they had the following children: George Poe III; Mary Elizabeth Ellicott Poe; Vylla Poe Wilson; and Elisabeth Ellicott Poe. He was a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe. [4]
He attended the Virginia Military Institute, and after fighting in the American Civil War, Poe built the Poe Chemical Works in Trenton, New Jersey, which included the first plant in America for mass-producing liquid nitrous oxide. He chose Trenton because of its gas works which created the raw materials for creating nitrous oxide. [4] [9] By 1883 he was supplying about 5000 dentists with laughing gas. [10]
Using the resources of his factory, Poe experimented with oxygen cylinders and tubing and found that he could resuscitate rats and rabbits that he had suffocated. In 1889, he undertook a nationwide tour. He claimed that his apparatus could revive humans who had drowned or been poisoned by gas lamps, and should be available in all hotels and lodging houses to deal with gas poisoning. [10]
Illness curtailed his activities. By 1900, he was nearly blind and partly paralyzed, and his doctors advised him to relocate to the country and retire. He moved to the Norfolk, Virginia, farm of a friend, Abram Cline Ostrander. [11] [12] He found that he could continue his research by enlisting the help of Arthur Frederick Ostrander, the article states: "Not the least interesting feature of Prof. Poe's device is the fact that a mere 10-year-old lad, Arthur Ostrander, acted as eyes and hands for the almost sightless and semi-paralyzed scientist in the construction of the device", the young son of his friend. [13] [14] [15] Arthur Ostrander acted as Poe's eyes and hands, allowing him to further refine his device. In 1907 he began another tour, accompanied by Arthur Ostrander, and two Norfolk physicians, Dr. Francis Morgan and Dr. J. P. Jackson. [12] He gained fresh publicity in 1909 when a man called Moses Goodman was revived using his apparatus. Again, his health prevented him from doing much, and other inventors developed their own artificial respirators.
He died on February 3, 1914, in Norfolk, Virginia. An obituary said that he had been nominated for a Nobel Prize. [4] [10] He was buried in Confederate Square, a Civil War memorial situated within Magnolia Cemetery, in Norfolk. [16] [17]
A gas mask is an item of personal protective equipment used to protect the wearer from inhaling airborne pollutants and toxic gases. The mask forms a sealed cover over the nose and mouth, but may also cover the eyes and other vulnerable soft tissues of the face. Most gas masks are also respirators, though the word gas mask is often used to refer to military equipment, the scope used in this article. The gas mask only protects the user from digesting, inhaling, and contact through the eyes. Most combined gas mask filters will last around 8 hours in a biological or chemical situation. Filters against specific chemical agents can last up to 20 hours.
Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for the first time: potassium and sodium in 1807 and calcium, strontium, barium, magnesium and boron the following year, as well as for discovering the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Davy also studied the forces involved in these separations, inventing the new field of electrochemistry. Davy is also credited with discovering clathrate hydrates.
Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, nitrous, nitro, or nos, is a chemical compound, an oxide of nitrogen with the formula N
2O. At room temperature, it is a colourless non-flammable gas, and has a slightly sweet scent and taste. At elevated temperatures, nitrous oxide is a powerful oxidiser similar to molecular oxygen.
Carl Auer von Welsbach, who received the Austrian noble title of Freiherr Auer von Welsbach in 1901, was an Austrian scientist and inventor, who separated didymium into the elements neodymium and praseodymium in 1885. He was also one of three scientists to independently discover the element lutetium, separating it from ytterbium in 1907, setting off the longest priority dispute in the history of chemistry.
A ventilator is a type of breathing apparatus, a class of medical technology that provides mechanical ventilation by moving breathable air into and out of the lungs, to deliver breaths to a patient who is physically unable to breathe, or breathing insufficiently. Ventilators may be computerized microprocessor-controlled machines, but patients can also be ventilated with a simple, hand-operated bag valve mask. Ventilators are chiefly used in intensive-care medicine, home care, and emergency medicine and in anesthesiology.
An iron lung is a type of negative pressure ventilator (NPV), a mechanical respirator which encloses most of a person's body and varies the air pressure in the enclosed space to stimulate breathing. It assists breathing when muscle control is lost, or the work of breathing exceeds the person's ability. Need for this treatment may result from diseases including polio and botulism and certain poisons.
Artificial ventilation or respiration is when a machine assists in a metabolic process to exchange gases in the body by pulmonary ventilation, external respiration, and internal respiration. A machine called ventilator provides the person air manually by moving air in and out of the lungs when an individual is unable to breathe on their own. The ventilator prevents the accumulation of carbon dioxide so that the lungs don't collapse due to the low pressure. The use of artificial ventilation can be traced back to the seventeenth century. There are three ways of exchanging gases in the body: manual methods, mechanical ventilation, and neurostimulation.
Paul Jozef Crutzen was a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist. He and Mario Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for their work on atmospheric chemistry and specifically for his efforts in studying the formation and decomposition of atmospheric ozone. In addition to studying the ozone layer and climate change, he popularized the term Anthropocene to describe a proposed new epoch in the Quaternary period when human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth. He was also amongst the first few scientists to introduce the idea of a nuclear winter to describe the potential climatic effects stemming from large-scale atmospheric pollution including smoke from forest fires, industrial exhausts, and other sources like oil fires.
John Scott Haldane was a British physician physiologist and philosopher famous for intrepid self-experimentation which led to many important discoveries about the human body and the nature of gases. He also experimented on his son, the celebrated and polymathic biologist J. B. S. Haldane, even when he was quite young. Haldane locked himself in sealed chambers breathing potentially lethal cocktails of gases while recording their effect on his mind and body.
Forrest Morton Bird was an American aviator, inventor, and biomedical engineer. He is best known for having created some of the first reliable mass-produced mechanical ventilators for acute and chronic cardiopulmonary care.
Colonel Cluny Macpherson was a physician and the inventor of an early gas mask. After World War I he served as the president of the St. John's Clinical Society and the Newfoundland Medical Association.
John Haven Emerson was an American inventor of biomedical devices, specializing in respiratory equipment. He is perhaps best remembered for his work in improving the iron lung.
Louis Agassiz Shaw Jr. was an instructor of physiology at the School of Public Health of Harvard University, where he is credited in 1928 along with Philip Drinker for inventing the Drinker respirator, the first widely used iron lung.
Arthur Frederick Ostrander, Sr., was an assistant scientist. He worked with inventor George Poe. In his childhood he worked with Poe, who taught him how an artificial respiration device functions. His assistance to Poe was instrumental in the successful development of the respiration device, as he performed the fine detail work and metal fabrication that Poe could no longer do. His face came to be one of the most well known of the time, having been featured in several large circulation newspapers.
The Poe brothers were six American football players who played football at Princeton University from 1882 until 1901. They were sons of John P. Poe Sr., an 1854 Princeton graduate and the Attorney General of Maryland from 1891 until 1895. They were also second cousins, twice removed, of the poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe, who died in 1849.
Nitrous oxide is a gas which can induce euphoria, hallucinogenic states and relaxation when inhaled. Nitrous oxide is a neurotoxin and excessive use can cause long-term neurological damage.
James Tayloe Gwathmey, M.D. was an American physician and the first president of the American Association of Anesthetics. A pioneer of early anesthetic devices for medical use, he co-authored the first comprehensive textbook on the subject of medical anesthetics, titled Anesthesia, which was published in 1914. For this and other contributions to anesthesiology, which included innovations in administering anesthetics to war wounded and in obstetrics, Gwathmey was hailed at the time of his death as the "Father of Modern Anesthesia."
Ervin George Bailey was an American mechanical engineer, founding president of Bailey Meter Company, manufacturer of industrial meters and controls, and inventor. He was recipient of the 1942 ASME Medal, and served as 67th president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Elisabeth "Bessie" Ellicott Poe and Vylla Ellicott Poe Wilson were journalists in Washington, DC. They sometimes collaborated on a woman's column under the name the Poe Sisters.
By asphyxiating rabbits, Poe was able to test his device — a pair of brass piston cylinders that could be operated with a handle. Before long, he was reviving rabbits. He moved on to larger and larger animals. In 1907 and '08, he traveled from city to city, demonstrating his invention for audiences of impressed physicians.
An audience, composed of about thirty men and three or four women, most of the men being physicians, attended a demonstration of Prof. George Poe's machine for producing artificial respiration in the library of the Kings County Medical Society, at 1,313 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, last night, under the auspices of the First Legion of the Red Cross Society.
Cousin of Famous Poet and Noted as a Scientist. Inventor of the Respirator. Also First to Liquefy Nitrous Oxide. Cadet at Virginia Military Institute at Time of Battle of New Market. Mentioned for the Nobel Prize for Scientific Attainment in Chemistry. Prof. George Poe, a cousin of the poet Edgar Allan Poe, a noted scientist and inventor, who had been mentioned for the Nobel prize for scientific attainment, a former resident of Washington, died in Norfolk, Virginia, yesterday of general paralysis. Prof. Poe was in his sixty-eighth year.
George Poe, scientist and inventor and cousin of Edgar Allan Poe, died in Norfolk, Virginia, yesterday. He was 68 years old and had held chairs in chemistry, especially as relating to gases.
One spring evening in 1908 three doctors stood before an expectant audience in the library of the Medical Society of the County of Kings in Brooklyn, New York. Before they began their demonstration, they needed one last thing. "Fetch a stray dog," they cried, tossing a quarter to an urchin outside. The boy returned with a yelping yellow mutt, which the doctors gently petted until it wagged its tail. Then they hog-tied and smothered it. The dog struggled for a few agonized minutes before giving a low moan and going limp. It was a scene worthy of Poe - not the great master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, but his cousin George. For he had promised the audience a feat befitting his family name: this dog would be brought back from the dead.
Not the least interesting feature of Prof. Poe's device is the fact that a mere 10 year old lad, Arthur Ostrander, acted as eyes and hands for the almost sightless and semi-paralyzed scientist in the construction of the device
With the assistance of young Ostrander, he built a working model in line with the construction of the heart. ... The boy Arthur, of whom the Professor was fond, assisted in assembling the model, and in doing what the Professor's [palsied] hands and dim eyes could no longer do.