Nevermore: Leaving it all Behind; George Poe in Crisis
In 1900, George Poe was wealthy, and at the top of his profession as a chemist and innovator. His business, the Poe Chemical Works, was producing Nitrous Oxide for more than 5000 dentists nationwide. His chemical processing innovations were written up the papers and scientific journals. He had married a Washington, DC socialite, Margaret Amy Wallace, some years prior, and had a home in Washington as his main residence. They had three children, and were part of the DC social scene. Life should have been good. But, it wasn’t. George Poe was miserable.
His life revolved around his chemistry and his drive to invent. His wife wanted him to live in DC and delegate the daily work. Poe would not, and rode the train back and forth weekly between Washington and Philadelphia, and on to Trenton. He slept in his factory, among all the fumes and toxins. His wife, frustrated, became addicted to Laudanum (Tincture of Opium), which was often prescribed to ladies of the day to relieve various ailments. He was indifferent to his children. At age 54, he was an old man; sick, frail and mentally weary. So, after having a series of strokes, his doctors told him it was time to retire. He did just that, but not how most might imagine. Instead of moving home to his family, he ditched everything; he put his wife in an institution and children in the care of others, sold his factory, and moved, alone, to the countryside of southern Virginia.
Poe used some contacts in the Masonic Fraternity to locate a brother Mason that lived in the outskirts of what was then Norfolk, Virginia (present day Chesapeake, South Norfolk Area). He knocked on the door of a farmer named Abram Cline Ostrander, and asked if he could rent a room to rest and recuperate, and get away from it all. Abram Ostrander told him “Welcome Brother, you may stay as long as you like”. George Poe stayed for the rest of his life.
Poe did nearly nothing for several months, only venturing out of the house to feebly try to walk and restore his mobility. He was also nearly blind, and his hands had no fine dexterity. So, he resigned himself to a life of study and reflection. For the next year or so, that is all he did. He returned to his unfinished work on artificial respiration and attempted to solve the unresolved issues. As his mind finally figured out what needed to be done to make the concept workable, his strength slowly returned as well; his drive to invent resurfaced. But, he thought, how to accomplish the work? While feeling better, he was still nearly an invalid. The answer came in the form of a young boy needing something to do.
Arthur Frederick Ostrander, youngest son of Abram Ostrander and his wife Harriet Louise, was a child prodigy who had an eidetic memory and was beyond the ability of his teachers to teach him by the time he was 10 years old. He was basically done with high school by then, and Harriet Ostrander offered Poe the services of young Arthur to act as his “eyes and hands” to work on the intricate measurements and fine metal fabrication needed to build a workable artificial breathing machine. So Arthur helped Poe every day for a few hours, and Poe tutored Arthur in advanced subjects, such as physics, advanced mathematics, chemistry, and of course, literature, to include cousin Edgar Allen Poe.
By 1907, they had a working prototype of the breathing device. They also developed an oxygen generator to create oxygen on demand. All this from a set of circumstances generated by effectively abandoning one’s family. With George Poe, there was always a backstory. He was a true Poe, through and through.
Fourth in a series on the history of the "Machine for Inducing Artificial Respiration".