the fifth decade of the century is marked by a discovery of supreme importance. Humphry Davy had noted the effects of nitrous oxide. The exhilarating influence of sulphuric ether had been casually studied, and Long of Georgia had made patients inhale the vapor until anaesthetic and had performed operations upon them when in this state; but it was not until October 16, 1846, in the Massachusetts General Hospital, that Morton, in a public operating room, rendered a patient insensible with ether and demonstrated the utility of surgical anaesthesia. 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.