The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 61, July 1957 - April, 1958 Page: 473

George P. Hachenberg, an American Leonardo da Vinci 473
deaf and dumb by telegraphy, railroad safety devices and rates,
and an electric voting machine for the United States Senate."4
In 1893 he published his Medical Consultation Book: A Phar-
macological and Clinical Book of Reference, which in its eight
hundred pages contains over ten thousand prescriptions for all
the illnesses of man. In 1902 he was working on another book that
was to be entitled Stray Thoughts in a Thousand Brief Aphorisms
on Morals, Science, and Religion.45 Currently, somewhere in Aus-
tin, this manuscript may lie hidden. It was apparently a part of
the possessions which were stored in trunks which were kept by
the Thrasher family who purchased the home from Hachenberg's
heirs when his will was broken. The trunks are believed to have
been moved with this family to Newning Street many years ago,
but the family was apparently later wiped out by illness.46
George P. Hachenberg died on January 8, 1904, at his home.47
Dr. T. J. Bennett certified the cause of death as old age and heart
disease.48 Scientist to the last, Hachenberg had insisted that an
autopsy be done, and it was reported that his old enemy tuber-
culosis had been entirely conquered under Texas skies.49 Call the
doctor a dreamer, yes; call him impractical, for he never acquired
wealth from his inventions; but, in much, his vision was prophetic.
Illness, the fact that he was a Yankee in Texas, and his basic pro-
fundity were probably serious handicaps in Hachenberg's produc-
tion, but it must be said that in all the world he found few things
that he did not seek to improve for the benefit of mankind.
44Hachenberg, A Chronological List of the Main Features of the Inventions.
45Ibid.
46Miss Lucy B. Anderson to J. M. Coleman, personal interviews, May, 1956.
47Texas Medical Gazette, IV, 23; Austin Statesman, January 9, 1904; Texas Med-
ical News, January, 1904, p. 174.
48Death Certificate of George P. Hachenberg, January 14, 1904 (MS., Death
Returns, Travis County Clerk's Office, Austin), I, 10o5.
49Miss Lucy B. Anderson to J. M. Coleman, personal interviews, May, 1956.