History records that oxygen was first used for treatment purposes in the United States on March 6, 1887, by Dr George E Holzapple. He used it for a teenager with pneumococcal pneumonia, generating oxygen from chlorate of potassium and black oxide of manganese, producing the life-giving gas in large test tubes heated by a lamp. Holzapple observed the resolution of cyanosis and the reduction in tachypnea in a matter of minutes.