The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1886-07-21
CRANKY INVENTORS.
A LAWYERS EXPERIENCE WITH MEN
OF QUEER AND MIGHTY IDEAS.

meter - The Mysterious Ingre dients-
A fanatics wart Cure.
Tell me about queer ideas In patents.
Queer is no name for some OF them, "
replied the patent attorney 70 whom the
request was addressed you can't have
any notion of the phenomenaIy strange
ideas that some people have that they
want TO put into the shape Of patents
Sometimes / almost fall over in my chair,
they are so queer"
"For instance?" interjected the reporter,
who was in hurry and who saw that the
lawyer was about TO branch off into long
dissertation about cranks.
We'll" said he, bucBling down to the
subject, "Tll give you some instances. One
queer crank was Thomas Towles, who
represented himself as being native OF
the eastern shore. He had a recipe for
what he called his Angels Wings Elixir. ,
He usually carried a sample bottle around
with him. The bottle was shaped
like that in which the druggists
sell soothing syrup, and it had big
red cork with picture on it of a man with
wings flying over the hOusetOps. The
angels wings elixir was of a greenish
color, with little white floats on its sur
face. Thomas said his elixir would make
wings grow out on the human body in two
months. The dose sufficient to accom-
plish this wonderful end was two tea
spoonsful every third day, and four tea
spoonsful at the end of each week as an
extra does 'to make it more binding he
explained. He wanted to dispose of the
recipe for 81, 800, with royalty of $50 on
every pair of wings that grew out. The
fellow was such queer genius that
took quite an interest in him, and tried
to find out of what he made his elixir.
Finally / succeeded He confided to me
in the strictest confidence, that it was
composed of three parts of dog-ta1l oil,
three parts of the extract of boiled duck
feathers, three parts of fried pigs liver,
and one part of moon juice The latter,
he explained, he collected by brushing
the surface of the full moon with a broom.
The moon juice, he said, 'infuses into
the wings the essence of eternal life He
gave me bottle of his elixir, and l still
have it in my office closet slowed away
somewhere.
THE HUMAN OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
zone of the queerest cranks ever met
was in August of last year. was sitting
in my office one rainy day when there
came knock on the door. l said, Come
in and in walked fat, elderly man, with
a red face, yellow mustache, a gOatee,
cross-eyed, bow-legged, and leading lit
tie dog by a string The stranger seated
and pulled out of his pocket a stick of
what looked like ordinary solder. 1t was
covered with a channels skin cover. Pull
his chair close up to mine, he proceeded to
unbosom himself.
"'Here is the greatest invention of the
age, he said, yanking the dog up into his
lap and patting it on the head with one
hand while he extended the solder to me
with the other
"'What is it?' asked, spotting him for a
crank right off.
1.-THE human galvano sOlderOmeter, he
replied. 1t will solder on amputated
limbs so that you can't tell they've been
cut off. A teaspoonful poured on the neck
OF decapitated criminal will cause his
head to stick to the neck and grow there
again as naturally as though it had never
been cut off I've tried it on several
white men who had their heads cut off in
France, and 1 restored every one of them
to life in less than three days. l had an
engagement to go to Persia and sell out
my stock to his nibs the shah, but l
thought I could make more by coming tc
America, and here l am. Do you want
it? Can get patent on it?'
II told him that in this country criminals
were hung and not decapitated, and when
people get their legs cut off they didn't
usually want them back again.
"'It's a splendid thing in time of war;
he continued "A general with a bucket
full Of this salve can restore all his
wounded soldiers to life and strength in
in twenty-four hours, and on the next day
his army will be good as it was on the
day before
II humored him by pretending to under
take his case, and 1 got him to give me
the recipe of his salve.
LIST OF INGREDIENTS
HE told me it was made of two parts
concentrated extract of civil service re
form, two parts refined gingerbread, two
parts of the essence of a comets tail, and
one part each of terrapin's toe nails, um.
brella- handle soup, stewed type metal and
pulverized cerebro-s spinal meningitis
"He told me that without a smile on his
face, looking at me so solemnly and earn
estly as though bIuf1ing me with a small
pair at poker. 1 wrote it all down just as
he gave it to me, and I told him to come
again in two years and | would have his
patent ready for him | expected he would
get mad, but he didn't. He just smiled
and bowed himself out, and he and his
little dog disappeared in a gust of satisfac
ton
Perpetual motion is the will-of-the-
wisp that draws a legion of cranks unceas
Ingly. There are some very amusing at
tempts made to obtain this motion. One
crank came to me not long ago and
showed what he confidently assured
me was a positively certain scheme for
perpetual motion. He had soldered two
Waterbury watches to a thermome
ter, and around them all he had
wound a piece of India rubber string.
One end of the string was fastened to
the spring of one of the watches and the
other end was tied to the spring of the
other watch He claimed that the com
bined action of the thermometer and the
rubber string kept the watches in perpet
ual motion, and with horseshoe magnet
he proposed to concentrate what he called
the spiral energy of the two watches,
thus producing power that could be trans
ferred to any kind of machinery. 1t was /
crazy notion. 1 afterward learned that
the fellow was matchmaker by trade, /
and that he had escaped from an insane /
asylum in Philadelphia.
"Another crank came to me with a box /
full Of gray powder that he said would /
cure Bright's disease of the kidneys. The |
powder was nothing more nor less than |.
the pulverized ashes made from burning
old shoe soleS.
81 was once visited by a lunatic who de /
elared that he had discovered a certain and /
speedy cure for corns and bunionS, warts, I
and all skin eruptiOnS. He showed me /
salye that he said was made by boiling TO- +
coo cockroaches in quart of water. To