Doctor Curmudgeon® Around and Around We Go!

By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman, is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

Having childhood memories of tearful entrapments in revolving doors, I have often wondered, why on earth, did somebody have the audacity to invent these contrivances?

They have never seemed logical to me.

Who lacks the skill to push on the door? Who does not have the ability pull a handle?

But, for some bizarre reason, in 1899, Rector’s, a restaurant in Times Square decided to install the world’s first revolving door. This creation was invented by Theophilus Van Kannel.

Revolving doors are rarely seen these days.

And so for those of you who have not been around since the Pleistocene epoch (when we went through the last Ice Age), a revolving door is more than just one door. It consists of several doors, usually three or four. There is a shaft in the center of the doors. A cylinder encloses the shaft upon which the doors are hung; and the doors go round and round their central pivot.
Later, they were composed of glass, so you could see what was coming through the door.

And these doors are not innocuous. In 1942, a horrible event occurred. There was a devastating fire in a Boston nightclub, with a hideous number of casualties. At the club’s entrance, there was only one revolving door. People were panicking and racing to escape the blaze and smoke. The door became jammed and customers were trapped inside the door, preventing others behind them from escaping.

Why did Theophilus Van Kannel conceive of this notion?

To quote from Wikipedia,

Theophilus Van Kannel, of Philadelphia, was granted US patent 387,571 on August 7, 1888 for a “Storm-Door Structure”.[8] The patent drawings filed show a three-partition revolving door. The patent describes it as having “three radiating and equidistant wings . . . provided with weather-strips or equivalent means to insure a snug fit”. The door “possesses numerous advantages over a hinged-door structure . . .it is perfectly noiseless . . . effectually prevents the entrance of wind, snow, rain or dust . . .” “Moreover, the door cannot be blown open by the wind . . . there is no possibility of collision, and yet persons can pass both in and out at the same time.” The patent further lists, “the excluding of noises of the street” as another advantage of the revolving door. It goes on to describe how a partition can be hinged so as to open to allow the passage of long objects through the revolving door. The patent itself does not use the term “revolving door”.

Hmmm.

I do not care about noise from the street when I leave a building.
I do not notice if my door is noiseless or grumbles when I push or pull my way in or out.
I know enough to be careful, if for some reason, I am carrying a long object.
I gravitate toward the beautiful simplicity of plain old doors…single doors.
There must be some PTSD remaining from my childhood encounters with revolving doors
But, secretly I believe they were really designed to frighten children like me.

Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.

Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”