The rival
claims of priority no longer interest us, but the occasion is one of
the most memorable in the history of the race. It is well that our
colleagues celebrate Ether Day in Boston--no more precious boon has ever
been granted to suffering humanity.(*)
(*) Cf. Osler: Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., XI, Sect. Hist. Med., pp.
65-69, 1918, or, Annals Med. Hist., N.Y., I, 329-332. Cf. also
Morton's publications reprinted in Camac's book cited above.--Ed.
In 1857, a young man, Louis Pasteur, sent to the Lille Scientific
Society a paper on "Lactic Acid Fermentation" and in December of the
same year presented to the Academy of Sciences in Paris a paper on
"Alcoholic Fermentation" in which he concluded that "the deduplication
of sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid is correlative to a phenomenon
of life." A new era in medicine dates from those two publications. The
story of Pasteur's life should be read by every student.(*) It is one of
the glories of human literature, and, as a record of achievement and of
nobility of character, is almost without an equal.
(*) Osler wrote a preface for the 1911 English edition of the
Life by Vallery-Radot.--Ed.
At the middle of the last century we did not know much more of the
actual causes of the great scourges of the race, the plagues, the fevers
and the pestilences, than did the Greeks.
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