Bernice (no last name given) reports:

>>We called the device Gentle Jane as a play on Gentleman Jim, a device used 
to freeze specimens for EM. Many of you in EM work may remember Gentleman 
Jim!<<

Oh is THAT where the name came from! I've been reading the ads and wondering 
for years (never seen one of course - small hospital cryostats have to be at 
least twenty years old, usually thirty). 

I recalled the phrase from a 17th century "catch" (bawdy polyphonic song) by 
Matthew White, on a record called "The Restoration Sophisticate" (Concord 
Records 4003, from 1957). A quick Web search finds the verse on a page of 
tongue-twisters from many languages, at:
http://www.lang.duke.edu/unichtm/tongtws8.htm

My dame hath a lame tame crane.
My dame hath a crane that is lame.
Pray, gentle Jane, let my dame's tame crane
Feed, and come home again.

while another online source applies it to that ultimate source of literary 
chick-flicks, Jane Austen:

http://www.praxisfilm.com/Scripts/LadyS.html

>>Jane Austen's first novel...In terms of content and tone, Lady S suggests a 
late-night tryst between Dangerous Liaisons and Sense and Sensibility. The 
book, like the lady, is controversial. Some Austenites have sought to 
suppress this early work, finding it too opposite, too disturbing for the 
gentle-Jane canon.<<

(Perhaps the latest model indeed includes artillery support.)

Bob Richmond
Samurai Pathologist (and literature major back somewhere in the Jurassic 
period)
Knoxville TN