Monday, July 14

Tired of the Hot Air? Have a Double Dr. Gorrie, On the Rocks of Course!

image = mosi.org
By Art Cashin

On this day in 1850, a doctor at the "Mansion House" in Apalachicola, Florida amazed some guests whom he had invited by serving them drinks with ice. They were amazed not because it was a dry town…..it was
not....the guests were amazed because this was Apalachicola, this was Florida, this was July…..yet here was ice. How deep could his icehouse go…..how many feet of sawdust had he needed to pile up to save these few cubes of ice?

Then the doctor (Dr. John Gorrie) further amazed his guests by bringing more ice…..he brought out whole brick-like blocks of it. The guests were stunned. How had he managed to save this much ice…..in Florida…..into July! Dr. Gorrie laughed and told them he had made the ice only yesterday. "Sure!”
they said. "You made ice in July?" "Who the hell are you…..Mother Nature with a bad calendar watch?"

Dr. Gorrie must have laughed again and told them he had found a way of compressing water and then air in a way to chill things enough to produce ice. "Wow!" said the guests "Now you can open a bar!" Dr. Gorrie looked at them strangely….."Bar?…..This is a cure for malaria!"

Dr. Gorrie had noticed that malaria (a big problem in 1850) seemed to happen near wetlands (like Apalachicola) when it was warm. So he determined it must be the hot air that caused malaria. So, if you cooled the hot air down…..you should be able to stop malaria. That night Gorrie raised enough funds to install his ice-making, anti-malaria machine at the United States Marine Hospital. The main effect was that the rooms were cooler and the patients were cooler but the "yellow fever" continued. (It would be a half century later until Walter Reed would prove that the cause was mosquitoes who thrived in the hot weather…..not the weather itself.)

Although Dr. Gorrie was disappointed at what he saw as his "failure", bartenders and patrons did find a medicinal use for the ice. To celebrate…..call Clarence Birdseye and point out how one man's failure can
be another man's fortune. Forgive the frosty response.



Many thanks to Mr. Cashin and UBS Financial Services who graciously allow his historical musings to be republished on this site. To enjoy more of Art's posts simply click on "Cashin's Comments" in the label section on the sidebar.

Tuesday, July 8

Don't Kidd About the Pirates

Image = Wikipedia
By Art Cashin

On this day in 1699, a formerly prominent businessman was arrested in Boston and sent to London to be tried for capital crimes. He claimed it was all a mistake but the authorities denied him counsel and shipped him off in chains.

Four years before, he had even been one of the respected businessmen in Wall Street. His house on Hanover Square was impressive. And he had even been a driving force in raising funds for Trinity Church which would stand in the graveyard at the end of Wall Street.

But his fame as a trader and a seaman brought him to the attention of the king. The king solicited his service to stamp out the piracy that plagued the sea-lanes. On the day he set out, records show that most of New York turned out to cheer him on.

After early successes, however, disgruntled former crewmen began to claim that he had thrown in with the pirates themselves, and had become the worst of the lot. And, when he dropped off part of his recaptured loot with his friends the Gardiner Family (of Gardiners Island), stories spread that he had buried treasures from the East Coast to the Caribbean. (In fact to this day some maintain that Jacob Astor may not have become wealthy in the fur trade - but by discovering a huge cache of this man's treasure in what is now
Central Park.)

Anyway, despite his protests of innocence (and lack of counsel) he was found guilty of five counts of piracy. And, in May of 1701, he was dropped through the hangman's trap door and into history. Thus one of Wall Street's earliest luminaries - Captain William Kidd became the symbol of piracy for three centuries.

To celebrate take some sweet young thing to the "Traders Lounge" and explain that the connection between Capt. Kidd and Wall Street was purely coincidental. But caution her not to comment about the eye patches of the patrons. It tends to agitate their parrots.


Many thanks to Mr. Cashin and UBS Financial Services who graciously allow his historical musings to be republished on this site. To enjoy more of Art's posts simply click on "Cashin's Comments" in the label section on the sidebar.


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