Meandering Musings by Linus Pauling: “American Scientists and the Spirit of the Frontier”

• To raise funds, Pauling wrote “American Scientists and the Spirit of the Frontier.”
• He cited 10 scientist-frontiersmen and his hydrate microcrystal anesthesia theory.
• To Pauling's ire, his submitted essay was rejected, frustrating fundraising efforts.
• Pauling's manuscript meandered around California, New York, Texas, Ohio, and Illinois.
• This is the first publication of “American Scientists and the Spirit of the Frontier.”

Hoping to raise funds in 1975 for his namesake institute, Linus Pauling submitted to Esquire magazine a 32-page handwritten manuscript, “American Scientists and the Spirit of the Frontier.” Angered when his submission for publication was declined, Pauling eventually gifted the original manuscript in 1986 to his friend, Linus Pauling Institute fundraiser Stephen Maddox, who would sell it in 2004 to the Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology. Published accurately here for the first time, the manuscript captures not only Pauling's sweeping metaphor of scientists as frontiersmen but also the creative process by which Pauling formulated his hydrate microcrystal theory of general anesthesia.