An inventive dentist, Dr. George Washington Melotte (1836 to 1915) held eight United States patents, but he had no patentee rights to the nitrous oxide generator depicted (left) in his 1870 newspaper advertisement. Melotte had cropped out most of the gasometer from the diagram that originally accompanied the 1868 patent of A. W. Sprague. (Hopefully, Melotte was actually using a Sprague apparatus in his office in Ithaca, New York!) Thirty-seven years after not being challenged for “borrowing” Sprague’s diagram, Melotte considered himself challenged by his own mailman. Only the mailbag saved the postal employee from what was deemed Melotte’s “temporary insanity” while lunging with a ceremonial sword. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)
An inventive dentist, Dr. George Washington Melotte (1836 to 1915) held eight United States patents, but he had no patentee rights to the nitrous oxide generator depicted (left) in his 1870 newspaper advertisement. Melotte had cropped out most of the gasometer from the diagram that originally accompanied the 1868 patent of A. W. Sprague. (Hopefully, Melotte was actually using a Sprague apparatus in his office in Ithaca, New York!) Thirty-seven years after not being challenged for “borrowing” Sprague’s diagram, Melotte considered himself challenged by his own mailman. Only the mailbag saved the postal employee from what was deemed Melotte’s “temporary insanity” while lunging with a ceremonial sword. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)
George S. Bause, M.D., M.P.H., Honorary Curator and Laureate of the History of Anesthesia, Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, Schaumburg, Illinois, and Clinical Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. UJYC@aol.com.
