John
GORRIE
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Born: 3 October 1803 in Nevis
John GORRIE died 29 June 1855 in Apalachicola, Florida, USA.
photo/ portrait (above) from wikipedia.org
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Occupation
Recorded occupation: Physician, scientist, inventor of mechanical refrigeration
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Birth — 18033 October 1803
Nevis
1843 - The Christmas card is invented (Sir Henry Cole and John Callcott Horsley, England)Artificial Freezer Patented (Nancy M. Johnson, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA)
1845 - The rubber band is invented (Stephen Perry, England)The refrigerator is invented (John Gorrie, United States)
'John Gorrie was born in 1803 and spent most of his childhood in South Carolina. After receiving a degree in medicine, he moved to Apalachicola, Florida, a port city on the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to practicing medicine, Gorrie studied tropical diseases. Like most physicians of the time, Gorrie incorrectly believed malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases were caused by hot air - a theory that was supported by his observation that 'nature would terminate the fevers by changing the seasons.' He wrote several articles urging people to drain swamps and marshlands, places where disease-carrying mosquitoes thrived. When Gorrie pursued the idea of using refrigeration to cool patients, he quickly discovered ice was expensive and sometimes hard to come by in the South, so he began exploring the potential of making artificial ice. By 1845, he quit practicing medicine to set about engineering an ice-making system. While receiving a US patent for his ice-making machine was a step forward,...Read full story
Visit , United States (USA) (American Colonies)
How the Refrigerator Changed History by Lydia Bjornlund, ABDO, 2015
Death — 185529 June 1855
Apalachicola, Florida, USA
He died at the age of 51.
Record added: 5/15/2022 12:22:34 PM
Last updated: 5/16/2022 4:51:41 PM
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