Explore Apalachicola: Dr. John Gorrie Museum.

While on vacation in Apalachicola my family visited the "ice machine museum", according to the sign outside. While that doesn't sound very thrilling, what's inside is way more interesting. Sign first:

The Florida Heritage Landmark reads:

Dr. John Gorrie (1803-1855) was an early pioneer in the invention of the artificial manufacture of ice, refrigeration, and air conditioning. He was granted the first U.S. patent for mechanical refrigeration on May 6, 1851 (U.S. Patent No. 8080). Dr. Gorrie moved to Apalachicola in 1833 after the completion of his education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York in Fairfield, New York. Motivated by a severe yellow fever epidemic in the summer of 1841, Dr. Gorrie and his predecessors felt the fever was caused by heat, humidity and decaying vegetation. He sought to effect a cure by introducing and element of cold in the form of refrigeration. Dr. Gorrie noted, "Nature would terminate the fevers by the changing of seasons." In May 1844, he constructed the refrigeration that received the patent. This mechanism produced ice in quantities but leakage and irregular performance impaired its operation. At various times he served as a physician of the Marine Hospital Service,

Postmaster, President of the Apalachicola Branch Bank of Pensacola, Mayor, Secretary of the Masonic Lodge, and founding vestryman of Trinity Episcopal Church. Dr. Gorrie was honored by the State of Florida with a statue of him placed in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

Dr. John Gorrie developed a form of air conditioning by hanging a bowl of ice above a patient with a funnel cone wide-end-down at the patient. The cold air falls and naturally the other hot air rises. It worked! But, ice was expensive and had to be shipped down by boat. Gorrie engineered a machine that used compressed air and brine water to lower the temperature of pure water to below freezing, and created artificial ice. However, the natural ice harvesters hired a New York Times editor to write an article claiming that Gorrie was "a crank" and even "playing God" by "daring" to recreate the "miracle of ice". Though the ice machine was patented in both the United States and England, he could not be taken seriously. We heard that some even recreated his machine from the patent blueprints but nothing he could do would stop them. Brilliant man seeking to heal the world, and he died broke and a crank. However,

people did see the light in his inventions later and changed the population distribution of humans forever.

The museum itself is a small one room building (not counting the Ranger's office). It had a history of the different trades in Apalachicola throughout history. When Granma Jo, Mom, Janine and I went we sat and watched a baaad 90s video on the life and trials of John Gorrie. It was very interesting and where I got most of this information from.

There's a biography of Dr. John Gorrie, Fever Man: A Biography of Dr. John Gorrie by V.M. Sherlock.

Other weird things I learned in the Gorrie museum: turpentine is tree sap. No really, I did not know that. I always thought of turpentine as that thin liquid in an indissolvable can... I thought it was oil based or something. Harvesters would slash pine trees at 45 degree angles and set troughs

in to guide the sap into catches. The sap hardens into resin and then it's used for apparently everything. In Gorrie's time it was used to seal floors, which is another reason why all the buildings were basically huge tinder boxes.

OH, they called the slashes "whiskers", because when they stacked they looked like cat whiskers!