Mahler v. Animarium Co.

• Decision Date: 21 October 1901
• Docket Number: 1,527.
• Citation: 111 F. 530
• Parties: MAHLER et al. v. ANIMARIUM Co.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

111 F. 530

MAHLER et al. v. ANIMARIUM Co.

No. 1,527.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

October 21, 1901

Appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Iowa.

L. A Gilmore, for appellants.

C. A Dudley and Justus Chancellor (Charles S. Thornton, on the brief), for appellee.

Before SANBORN and THAYER, Circuit Judges, and ADAMS, District Judge.

THAYER Circuit Judge.

The Animarium Company, the appellee, exhibited its bill against James H. Mahler, Myrtle G. Mahler, and Chattie E. Field, who were doing business as the Oxygenor Company, the appellants to restrain the latter from infringing United States letters patent No. 587,237, issued July 27, 1897, and United States letters patent No. 587,612, issued August 3, 1897, and United States letters patent No. 588,483, issued August 17, 1897. The patents in question were issued to Hercules Sanche, as assignor to the Animarium Company of New York. The defendants below, who are the appellants here, demurred to the bill, but the demurrer was overruled. Thereupon they elected to stand on the demurrer, and a decree was entered in favor of the Animarium Company, sustaining the validity of patents Nos. 587,237 and 587,612, from which decree the defendants have appealed. Although the bill charges an infringement of the three patents specified above, yet it was conceded in argument by the complainant's solicitors that the right of the Animarium Company to a decree depends upon the validity of patent No. 587,237, issued on July 27, 1897, which contains but a single claim. It was admitted that the decree below ought not to have been granted if that claim is invalid. In view of these concessions made in open court on the oral argument, it becomes unnecessary to examine or express any opinion concerning the later patents. As the case below passed off on demurrer, no testimony having been heard, in determining whether patent No. 587,237 is valid we are at liberty to consider only the allegations of the bill and the specification and claim of that patent. We are at liberty, however, to examine the patent and determine whether it is valid in the light of that common knowledge of facts and principles which is possessed by all persons of average intelligence. Brown v. Piper, 91 U.S. 37, 23 L.Ed. 200; Richards v. Elevator Co., 158 U.S. 299, 15 Sup.Ct. 831, 39 L.Ed. 991; Id., 159 U.S. 477, 16 Sup.Ct. 53, 40 L.Ed. 225; Engraving Co. v. Hoke (C.C.) 30 F. 444, 446. The specification of letters patent No. 587,237 declares at the outset that the patentee has invented 'a new and improved method of, and apparatus for, treating diseases, of which the following is a specification. ' He then says:

'In an application for a patent filed by me September 17, 1885, I have advanced certain new ideas and theories concerning the disturbance of the normal functions of life commonly known as 'disease.' My observation and experience justify the belief that most diseases, and especially those of a nervous character, are due to a disturbance of the electrical equilibrium of the body. It is well known that the earth and the surrounding envelop of air are strongly charged with an opposite polarity, and that any disturbance of the normal relations of these forces, such as occurs before a thunderstorm, results in discomfort to the whole animal tribe. The habits of civilized life-- i.e. the wearing of shoes and clothing of nonconducting material, and the insulation from the earth by dry floors and feather beds-- prevent the body from partaking freely of the electrical equilibrium of the earth, and a preponderance of an electric tension of either a positive or negative character in the body produces, by a stimulation or suppression of chemico-vital function, the abnormal condition of things, the symptoms of which we call 'disease.' Hogs in the field, turtles, alligators, and the lower animals that lie in the mud and readily partake of or assimilate themselves to the electrical conditions of the earth, are notoriously free from disease and nervousness. Man, the feathered tribe, and higher animals, who are covered with a nonconducting coat, and are more or less insulated from the earth, are subject to these difficulties in marked contrast. Pursuing this theory, I have undertaken to correct these difficulties, not by an attack upon the symptoms, after the manner of medication, but by the logical process of bringing to bear upon the system a set of influences reverse to those which involved the difficulties. In my first application I only contemplated the restoration of electrical equilibrium by a metallic or conductive contact between the body and the earth. My present application comprehends even a wider scope and a more general application, in that it does not simply comprehend a preservation of electrical equilibrium, for this would only seem to preserve health, but it contemplates the removal of abnormal conditions by producing an electrical tension in the body contrary to that which superinduced the disease; and for this purpose I have found that the contact of the body through a small conductor with a source of extraordinary heat or extraordinary cold permits me to produce either a positive or negative condition in the body without connection with the earth; it being remembered at the outstart that the electrical condition referred to by me has nothing whatever to do with galvanism of dynamic currents, but is only a condition of electric potential or static polarity. This agency permits me to reach all the functions of the body, and bring them into healthy and effective action, stimulating the chemico-vital processes without having to rely upon the single channel of an enfeebled and diseases stomach, which is almost the only avenue of treatment by medication.'

Then follows a description of the device, which is very simple; being nothing more than two metallic plates connected by a fine wire, one of which plates is to be placed in contact with the limb or arm of a patient, and the other placed in an ice cooler or on a stove or in the sun. The cut on the opposite page illustrates the device. The inventor suggests in his description of the device that the wire connecting the two metal plates may be connected at M2 in the drawing, by an 'electrical switch,' with a 'metal anchor' imbedded in the ground so as to put the patient 'in the same electric tension with the earth.'

The following additional observations or statements are contained in the specification:

'It is not pretended that there is any flow of current or any of the phenomena of dynamic electricity manifest in this apparatus, but only a charging of the body with a certain magnetic polarity, the effects of which upon the system are remarkable in stimulating the system to throw off disease. The cold or earth connection I find almost universally applicable to allay nervousness and stimulate the system by counteracting one polarity of the body. The hot connection is for the opposite polarity,-- such, for instance, as exists in inflammatory fevers; its effect being usually to first raise the temperature, and then bring the body to a normal temperature by dissipating congestion and starting the perspiration. The manner in which I believe the charging of the body with a positive or negative polarity acts upon the system to effect physiological changes is by the exertion of an attractive influence, and the stimulating of an endosmose of gases of the air through the capillaries and electrolytic action in the cells,

...