Waldie and Simpson

From:

JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE from ENGLAND TO CALCUTTA BY THE OVERLAND ROUTE

By David Waldie LRCS (Edinburgh)

Edited with notes by Alan G. Young.

Published by Linlithgow Heritage Trust 2013.

David Waldie was born on 27 February 1813 in Linlithgow. He studied to become a surgeon, attending classes at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. He completed his studies

on 2^nd November 1831 qualifying as a Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons. One of David Waldie’s close contemporaries at the Royal College also came from Linlithgowshire. He was James Simpson, son of a Bathgate baker, who took classes at both the Royal College and the University. The paths of these two men would cross some years later when Waldie’s interest and expertise in chemistry and Simpson’s drive and energy combined to produce what was perhaps one of the most significant advances of 19^th century medicine.

After qualifying Waldie entered practice as a surgeon in Linlithgow. In 1839 he gave up the practice and moved to Liverpool to take up the post of Chemist to the Liverpool Apothecaries’ Hall.

At the Apothecaries’ Hall Waldie was required to prepare and dispense drugs for local medical practitioners. One substance that was regularly asked for was chloric ether from which chloroform is derived. Chloroform had been ‘discovered’ in America by an army doctor, Samuel Guthrie. At around the same time the same discovery had been made by Liebig in Germany and Soubiron in France.

Guthrie’s method for preparing chloroform was to distil chloride of lime with spirits of wine and re-distil the liquor obtained to produce chloric ether. Further distillation of chloric ether produced the fluid which could be called chloroform. The preparation of chloric ether and chloroform was already established at Apothecaries’ Hall when Waldie took up his post there. His predecessor, Dr Brett, had been asked by a local doctor, Dr Formby, to make up chloroform which he used to treat hysteria in women. Using information from the American Pharmacopeia, Brett was able to make the preparation and indeed refine it to improve the quality and stability of the substance produced.

When he took over Waldie recognised that, even with Brett’s improvements, the product was still unstable and inefficient in use. Waldie’s work to produce a purer and more stable compound met with some success. So much so that, in 1847, during a visit to Scotland, he met with his old student acquaintance James Simpson, now professor of midwifery at Edinburgh University and told him of his work. Simpson was immediately interested. He was already seeking a suitable form of anaesthesia for use in easing the trauma of childbirth. He had used ether but but considered it not entirely satisfactory. He was on the lookout for something more suitable and efficient. From his conversation with Waldie he quickly realised that chloroform might well fit this purpose.

Waldie agreed that, on his return to Liverpool, he would make up a sample of his preparation and send it to Simpson. Unfortunately Waldie’s laboratory had been severely damaged by fire. Accordingly he was not able, immediately, to fulfil his offer to Simpson. Simpson however had clearly recalled enough of the process of manufacture to be able to instruct a local chemist in Edinburgh, Duncan, Flockhart & Co, to make up a batch of chloroform to Waldie’s specification.

Simpson famously tried out the the preparation on himself and two colleagues after dinner at his house one evening. That test persuaded him that chloroform was indeed the anaesthetic for which he was searching. Soon thereafter he presented a paper to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh setting out his findings. Simpson’s paper carried a footnote:

‘In talking over with different chemists, what fluids might be sufficiently volatile to be respirable, and hence deserving of being experimented upon, Mr Waldie first named to me the perchloride of formyle (i.e. chloroform), as worthy, amongst others of a trial.’

The footnote was omitted in the published paper.

Simpson wrote to Waldie about his experimentation: ‘The first night we took it, Dr Duncan, Dr Keith and I all tried it simultaneously and we were all under the table in a minute or two.’

Waldie became sidelined but he did have his champions. His friend John Abraham, writing in the Pharmaceutical Journal in 1869 says: ‘To judge correctly, it is necessary to bear in mind that at the time when Simpson was induced to try chloroform it was not a commercial article. I believe it was not used except in Liverpool, and there by two houses only, The Apothecaries Company and Mr Clay, for making chloric ether.’

A letter to the Liverpool Daily Post in June 1911 also refers to the controversy. The writer, Mr Thomas Henderson, a director of Walter Duncan & Co, Tea Merchants in Calcutta and Glasgow, quotes his fellow director, a close friend of Waldie in Calcutta, as saying: ‘that Waldie was the real discoverer of chloroform, but being a man of guileless disposition, he communicated it to Dr Simpson, who had the commercial instinct highly developed, and the discovery was put out as belonging to him.’

Waldie’s brother George, also promoting his brother’s interest produced a paper setting out the case for giving his brother due credit for his contribution. Waldie himself did endorse his brother’s argument in a letter he sent to John Abraham in 1870. ‘Though I never said much on the subject, I was never satisfied with the recognition my share in the matter got, because I could never admit that the acknowledgement made by Dr Simpson was at all adequate. He did as little as he could possibly do and the statement he made was not a fair one.’ Despite this Waldie did not actively seek recognition.

Professor Walter Dilling, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool (1930-50) in a paper about Waldie and his role in the introduction of chloroform entitled ‘The Prophet of Chloroform’ published by the Liverpool Medical institute in 1933 gave Waldie’s claim his clear support. He said, ‘There can be no doubt that Simpson denied Waldie the public renown which he ought to have shared with him, because, since very little was known about the commercial preparation of the active constituent of chloric ether except by Waldie, he must have communicated his method of purification in October to Simpson, who instead of waiting for Waldie’s preparation, lost no time in having the pure chloroform made in Edinburgh, and Duncan, Flockhart & Co are alone referred to as makers of the pure substance by Simpson.’

Despite the controversy surrounding the matter of chloroform, when Waldie learned of Simpson’s death he did speak warmly of him in a letter to his brother George. He said, ‘ Sir James Simpson is dead, a wonderful man with gifts rarely to be met with in one individual… It was I that suggested chloroform to him on occasion of a visit I paid when down from Liverpool seeing my friends. My laboratory had been burned down and I had no means of making chloroform on my return otherwise I would have discovered its properties myself.’

A last word on the controversy may be an article in the Linlithgowshire Gazette in 1930 which suggests that Waldie’s reaction to it reflected his retiring nature and unassuming character which resulted in his being unwilling to seek fame or notice for himself.

David Waldie went to Calcutta in 1853 to take up the post of chemist to Malcolm & Co, a firm of chemical manufacturers. He died in Calcutta in 1889. He is buried in the Scottish Cemetery.

In conclusion it is worth noting the remarks of the President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal on reporting Waldie’s death to the Society at its monthly meeting in July 1889: Before Dr Waldie came to India some forty years ago, he had been connected with Sir James Simpson, who was first to apply sulphuric ether as an anaesthetic, and appears to have suggested to him the use of chloroform instead of ether, though our late friend and associate does not seem to have received full credit for his share in one of the most important discoveries of the age.

David Waldie is commemorated in Linlithgow by a plaque erected in 1913, the centenary of his birth, on the wall of the property in the High Street where the family business had been located.

From:

SIMPSON THE OBSTETRICIAN A biography

by Myrtle Simpson (1972)

p125

As 1847 advanced, Simpson used ether in all his cases at the Lying-in Hospital and in his practice, administering it for a few minutes to start with then up to several hours; but he was not entirely satisfied. Ether needed a heavy glass bottle which was a nuisance to carry up and down the tenement stairs in the Old Town, and it had an objectionable smell that hovered over the patient long after it had been used, and made the ladies of the New Town sick… During the summer and autumn of 1847 the surgical world slowly took to the use of ether, but doubts about its safety were beginning to be voiced… Simpson felt sure that there must be other gases capable of producing the ‘suspended animation’ of ether.

p127

A Liverpool chemist from Simpson’s student days visited 52 Queen Street in October, and suggested that pure chloroform might be suitable for his purpose. He was David Waldie from Linlithgow, who had known Simpson from their student days, Waldie graduating in 1831. His main interest lay in chemistry and in 1840 he gave up medicine to become chemist to the Liverpool Apothecaries Company.

Waldie had worked with chloroform for Dr Formby, a Liverpool physician who had used it since 1831 in a diluted form as a stimulant and also as a soothing antispasmodic. Waldie had dissolved it in a known quantity of spirit, and so produced chloric ether of uniform strength. He promised now to prepare some pure chloroform for Simpson as soon as he returned to Liverpool and would send it for trial.

Chloroform was a ‘curious liquid’, first described by two chemists independently in 1831 and 1832.

Its chemical and physical composition was first determined by a distinguished French scientist, Dumas, in 1835. In 1842 Dr Mortimer Glover, a young Edinburgh graduate, discovered that it was a powerful narcotic poison to animals and that one of its effects was to produce insensibility. In early 1847 another Frenchman, the physiologist Flourens, proved that inhaling it had the same effect as ether. Simpson had known since 1845 of Formby’s use of the drug, but he said later that he did not know of Flouren’s work. Because of Glover’s research he had thought the drug sounded too dangerous and had up till now dismissed it.

Matthews Duncan mentioned chloroform again to Simpson in November and, as the promised sample had not arrived from Waldie in Liverpool because his laboratory had gone up in smoke, Simpson asked the local chemist, Duncan and Flockhart, to make him some. This arrived at 52 Queen Street, but it did not look very hopeful and the bottle was put aside.

Matthews Duncan had meanwhile been carrying out some research of his own. He had visited Dr Gregory’s laboratory at the University and had carried off haphazardly a sample of every liquid in the laboratory that he imagined ‘would breathe’. Chloroform was one of these. He knew nothing of Waldie’s conversation with Simpson over this drug, and he told Robert Christison later, that one forenoon he tried out his collection with no results till he came to the chloroform. After one tentative sniff, he felt that here was something hopeful.

That very evening the three doctors gave the drug a thorough testing. [The chloroform proved most effective in rendering Simpson, Duncan and Keith unconscious.]

p131

Simpson was now absolutely confident that he had the answer. Chloroform appeared to have all the virtues… On 8 November he first used it on an obstetrical case. The patient was a doctor’s wife, Jane Carstairs… The child was a girl, and her birth registered in Fife, for 9 November. She was christened on Christmas Day, 1847, Wilhelmina. Simpson kept in touch with this child, and was sent a photograph of her at seventeen taken by a friend, John Adamson. Because of her pious expression Simpson named the study ‘St Anaesthesia’.

Simpson read the account of the birth (‘Notice of a New Anaesthetic Agent‘) to the Edinburgh Medico Chirurgical Society on 10 November and his first written pamphlet appeared on the 15^th.

There is a footnote in his pamphlet, in which Simpson thanks Mr Waldie for first mentioning chloroform among other drugs as worthy of a trial.

A footnote acknowledgement of Waldie’s part in the chloroform experiment was omitted from the account reprinted in the current medical journals, and his relations, at a much later date, took exception to this. But Waldie was only one of a number of chemists that Simpson had consulted, and he had not been able to produce the drug as promised.

Simpson sent Waldie a copy of his pamphlet on 14 November with this covering letter.

My Dear Sir,

I send you the first of the enclosed papers which I have myself sent off. I am sure you will be delighted to see part of the good results of our hasty conversation. I think I will get hold yet of some greater thing in the same way.

I had the chloroform in the house for several days before trying it as, after seeing it such a heavy unvolatile like liquid, I despaired of it and went on dreaming about others.

The first night we took it, Dr Duncan, Dr Keith and I all tried it simultaneously and were all under the table in a minute or two.

Yours truly,

J.Y. Simpson.

Waldie, of course, would be envious that he had not investigated chloroform himself, but there is no evidence that he conducted any experiments on his own before Simpson told him of his results. Waldie’s first publication on the subject of pain and chloroform was published in the Lancet on 1 January 1848, and after that his interest in chloroform appears to have faded out for the next twenty-two years, during which time he was making a fortune in Calcutta. On Simpson’s death, however, the subject cropped up again, and in 1913 a plaque was erected to Waldie in Linlithgow, his birthplace.

Any surviving association Jackson or Waldie has with the history of anaesthesia is surely due to their luck in association with Morton or Simpson. If Simpson made no more mention of Waldie, what credit did Waldie give to M. Flourens, whose report on the anaesthetic properties of chloroform was read to the French Association of Science on the previous 8 March! Simpson was a tremendous worker, and in a hurry. He was thinking not of himself or Waldie, but of chloroform. Under the circumstances, Waldie was lucky in that even his name remains.

From:

Anesthesiology 4 2011, Vol.114, 1004-1005.

The Discovery of Chloroform: Has David Waldie’s Role Been Exaggerated?

Ray J. Defalque, M.D.; Amos J. Wright, M.L.S.

It is now commonly accepted that James Y. Simpson, (1811–1870), professor and chairman of the Department of Midwifery at Edinburgh University (Scotland), tried chloroform after it was suggested to him in October 1847 by David Waldie, L.R.C.S. Edinburgh; (1813–1889), pharmacist in Liverpool. Likewise, it is commonly accepted that Simpson was ungenerous in acknowledging his friend’s contribution to the discovery.

Indeed, a brief footnote in Simpson’s first account of the discovery stated, “Waldie had mentioned the perchloride of formyle (chloroform) among others as worthy of a trial.” In the same footnote, Simpson warmly thanked his assistants, J. Matthews Duncan, F.R.C.S. (1826–1890), and George Keith, as well as William Gregory (1803–1858), who had suggested the chloride of hydrocarbon (Dutch liquid) and given him samples of various compounds to try. Gregory was chairman of the Chemistry Department at Edinburgh University. Duncan and Keith had studied midwifery under Simpson.

However, a review of the facts surrounding the discovery of chloroform leads us to question the importance of Waldie’s contribution and the extent of Simpson’s ingratitude. The reminiscences of Duncan and James Miller (1812–1854), professor of surgery at Edinburgh University, never mention Waldie. In addition, throughout the years after the discovery, Simpson repeatedly thanked Waldie.

In early 1848, Miller, who was a professor of surgery at Edinburgh University and neighbor of Simpson, described the evening of November 4, 1847, as it was reported to him by participants. Although Simpson initially discarded the chloroform as “too heavy,” he later changed his mind and retrieved it from the wastebasket. Miller does not mention Waldie.

Duncan, who was then a lodger and one of Simpson’s assistants (later becoming a renowned obstetrician in Edinburgh then in London), gave a different and more detailed version of the events in a March 6, 1870, letter to Robert Christison (1797–1880), a professor of toxicology and medical jurisprudence at Edinburgh University. A copy of that letter was sent by Duncan’s widow to the British Medical Journal in 1896. The letter indicates that, a few days before the discovery, Simpson and Duncan visited Gregory, who gave them samples of various compounds. Duncan inhaled several of them on the morning of November 4, 1847. He found chloroform to be “the most interesting of them” and brought it to Simpson’s dining room that evening. He reported that he had forgotten the name given to the compound, but that “it certainly was not chloroform.” It probably was perchloride of formyle.

Duncan’s sister Isabella, in two short posthumous biographies of her brother, added that he had been unconscious for 15 min after he had inhaled chloroform. It was this response that prompted him to suggest it to Simpson. She indicated that her brother had been hurt when Simpson ignored his important role in the discovery although he had never complained. Duncan, too, never mentioned Waldie.

Thus, both Miller and Duncan ignored Waldie.

In a lecture given to the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society on November 29, 1847, Waldie complained of Simpson’s lack of acknowledgment. Possibly encouraged by family and friends, he was more emphatic in a pamphlet published in 1870 after Simpson’s death. But Waldie was unfair to his late friend who had profusely thanked him in a letter accompanying his account of the discovery he had sent him in 1847. Simpson also frequently mentioned Waldie’s name in his lectures to medical students.

In a letter to his Liverpool colleague John Abraham (1813–1881), pharmacist at Clay & Abraham Co., Waldie admitted that Simpson’s acknowledgment “had been handsome.” Waldie was thus amply thanked for a mere suggestion he had offered in October 1847.

*University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama.

References

Simpson JY: Account of a New Anaesthetic Agent as a Substitute for Sulphuric Ether in Surgery and Midwifery. Edinburgh, Sutherland & Knox, 1847, pp 8–9Simpson, JY Edinburgh Sutherland & Knox

Miller J: Experience with Chloroform. Edinburgh, Sutherland & Knox, 1848, pp 9–11Miller, J Edinburgh Sutherland & Knox

The Life of Sir Robert Christison, Bart, Memoirs (volume 2). Edited by his sons. Edinburgh, W. Blackwood & Sons, 1885, pp 352–3

Duncan JHM: The jubilee of chloroform. Br Med J 1896; 2:1413Duncan, JHM

Levak ID: Aberdeen, archives and anaesthesia, Essays on the History of Anaesthesia. Edited by Barr M, Boulton TB, Wilkinson DJ. New York, Royal Society Medical Press Ltd., 1996, pp 201–3Levak, ID New York Royal Society Medical Press Ltd

McKenzie AG: James Matthews Duncan. Anaesthesia 2003; 58:815McKenzie, AG

Wilkinson DJ: James Matthews Duncan. A strange little book. Anaesthesia 2003; 58:36–41Wilkinson, DJ

Waldie D: Chloroform, the new agent for producing insensibility to pain by inhalation. Pharmaceutical Times 1848; 3:201–3Waldie, D

Waldie D: The True Story of the Introduction of Chloroform into Anaesthetics. Edinburgh, Oliver & Boyd, 1870, pp 7, 21–3Waldie, D Edinburgh Oliver & Boyd

Dilling WJ: David Waldie, LRCS (Edinb): The prophet of anaesthetic properties of chloroform. Liverpool Medico-Chirurgical J 1934; 42:82–98Dilling, WJ

Dundee JW: David Waldie: Facts and fiction. Br J Anaesth 1953; 8:218–29Dundee, JW

From:

ANAESTHESIA Vol 8, No. 4 October, 1953

by John W. Dundee

Lecturer in Anaesthesia, University of Liverpool

In 1839 or 1840 David Waldie forsook medicine to become chemist to the Liverpool Apothecaries Company. It was here that he first came into contact with chloroform (or perchloride of formyle as it was then called). About 1833 an impure chloroform called chloric ether (a solution of chloroform in alcohol) began to be used as an internal medicine in this country. In 1838 or 1839 Dr Brett of the Apothecaries Company found instructions on how to prepare chloroform in the United States Dispensary. He never managed to make pure chloroform. Pure chloroform was made by Waldie when he succeeded Brett.

Professor Simpson’s attention was drawn to chloric ether in 1845 by Richard Formby, a Liverpool physician. In 1847 chloric ether was tried as a general anaesthetic with varying success. Waldie was aware of these trials. Since chloric ether is mostly alcohol Waldie said it would not work as a general anaesthetic. Waldie had prepared almost pure chloroform but had not published his method.

He described his meeting with Simpson in October 1847:

Dr Simpson spoke to me about his trials of various vapours, in his endeavours to find something else than Ether, amongst others mentioning chloric ether, the chemical constituents of which he was evidently not aware of. This I explained to him, shewing him that it was chiefly vapour of alcohol that would be inhaled and advised him to try the pure Chloroform, which appeared to me likely to be suitable. I promised also to prepare some as soon as I could on my return to Liverpool, and send it to him for trial. Unfortunately the laboratory of the Company had previously been destroyed by fire [on 17^th July 1846], and was not the restored so I could not prepare it…

Simpson did not wait long for Waldie to send the promised chloroform, but had some prepared by Duncan, Flockhart and Co. Its narcotic properties were first noticed by Matthews Duncan, Simpson’s assistant. Without knowing of the meeting with Waldie, he inhaled the drug a day or two before the evening of the 4^th November, 1847, when Professor Simpson, Drs. Keith and Duncan all tried it simultaneously and ‘were all under the table in a minute or two’. It would seem that Simpson

had not much faith in Waldie’s suggestion as the liquid was so unvolatile-like that he had it in the house for several days before trying it.

Chloroform was first used as an anaesthetic in obstetrics on 8^th November, 1847, and the results communicated to the Edinburgh Medico-Chirurgical Society on 10^th November. Simpson informed Waldie of ‘the good results of our hasty conversation’ in a letter dated 14^th November, 1847.

His written statements first appeared in a pamphlet dedicated to Professor Dumas (who discovered the formula of chloroform) published on 15^th November. This contained no mention of Duncan’s previous experience with the drug, and Waldie was only mentioned in a footnote.

The footnote was omitted when the results were later published in the current medical journals. It is not surprising that Waldie’s name was not mentioned in a discussion on the history of chloroform at the Medical Society of London on 6^th December, 1847.

A paper entitled ‘Chloroform, the new agent for producing insensibility to pain‘ was read by Waldie to the Liverpool Library and Philosophical Society on 29^th November, 1847. This outlined the introduction of chloric ether and purification of chloroform, and events leading up to the meeing with Simpson. An abstract of this paper appeared in The Lancet, but it was not published in its entirety until 1^st January, 1848.

Waldie seemed to take no further interest in chloroform and faded out of the picture for a further 22 years. He continued to be friendly with Simpson as they attended a meeting of Liverpool Medical Institution on 28^th December, 1848.

David Waldie accepted the post of chemist to Malcolm and Co. at Calcutta in 1853. He stayed in India till his death on 23^rd July, 1889. He was buried in Howrah Cemetery.

The next mention of Waldie in the medical press was following Simpson’s death on 6^th May, 1870.

His obituary notice in the Lancet says that a hint to try chloroform was was supplied by Mr. Waldie, a chemist in Liverpool.

In 1870, George Waldie published a pamphlet:

THE TRUE STORY – THE INTRODUCTION OF CHLOROFORM INTO ANAESTHETICS Being the original account given in 1847 and a restatement in 1870

by DAVID WALDIE F.C.S., Member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

REMARKS BY GEORGE WALDIE

Of the lack of acknowledgement by Simpson, David Waldie writes:

‘Willingly do I acknowledge that the discovery was Dr. Simpson’s, and the honour his due. All that I looked for was a distinct and honest acknowledgement that I had recommended or even suggested to him to try Chloroform. Out of all the great renown and more substantial advantages the discovery brought him, he might easily have spared that; but irrespective of this, I considered it only an act of justice, and I did not get it.’

On Simpson’s posthumous publication ‘History of Modern Anaesthesia: a Second Letter to Jacob Bigelow’ he says:

‘Yet much as is the credit given to Dr. Jackson [See end note.] for suggesting ether, not a word is said of the man who suggested and recommended chloroform to Dr. Simpson. His name is not once mentioned, and, so far as I am aware, he never got any greater credit from Dr. Simpson for one principal means of obtaining his widespread renown, than was conveyed in a footnote to his original communication, to the effect that Mr. Waldie first mentioned chloroform to him… His reputation cannot suffer by my getting credit for what I am justly entitled to, and that is all I ask; and I would willingly entertain the hope, that had he been still living among us, and my claim placed before him as it is now before the public, he himself would have admitted to its justice.’

At this time Waldie was carrying on a flourishing business as a manufacturer of chemicals in Calcutta and the claims for recognition of his part in the discovery of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform did not cause him much concern. In the spring of 1871 he wrote to his friend John Abraham:

‘I ought not to omit noticing the matter of the Chloroform discovery and thanking you for your endeavour ito get the small amount of credit for which I was entitled. But it does not seem to have attracted much attention. The novelty has passed and the public in general will not give themselves much trouble about things that do not immediately interest them. Even those who would be disposed to do so will say that the other party is not now here to answer for himself and that it is too late to raise the question. I never cared much about it though I felt at the first that Dr. Simpson’s acknowledgement was anything but handsome.’

Only once again in his long series of letters to John Abraham did Waldie refer to chloroform, viz. In 1879, when he said he was rather tired of the frequent occurrence of the topic.

Conclusions:

Many people have given a verdict in the case of Simpson versus Waldie. Waldie himself claimed to be the ‘Jackson of Chloroform‘. [See end note.]He has been called ‘the active agent in the discovery, while Simpson was the passive agent ‘, and elsewhere a ‘forgotten pioneer of chloroform anaesthesia‘. Probably he was best described by Dilling as ‘Prophet of the Anaesthetic Properties of Chloroform‘. Finally, it must be mentioned that M. Flourens reported the anaesthetic properties of chloroform in animals to the French Academy of Sciences on 8^th March 1847. This discovery was never mentioned by either Waldie or Simpson.

* * *

End note:

From

WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY OF FAMOUS PEOPLE

WILLIAM THOMAS GREEN MORTON 1819-1868. US dentist who in 1846 introduced ether as an anaesthetic; his claim to be the first to do so was strongly disputed. While searching for ways to avoid the pain of tooth extraction, he learned of the pain-killing effects of ether from C. THOMAS JACKSON (1805-1880), a chemist and physician. Morton realized the anaesthetic properties of the gas, and the two men patented the process and set about publicizing it.