in pathology.  By Morgagni’s method of “anatomical thinking,” Skoda in Vienna, Schonlein in Berlin, Graves and Stokes in Dublin, Marshall Hall, C. J. B. Williams and many others introduced the new and exact methods of the French and created a new clinical medicine.  A very strong impetus was given by the researches of Virchow on cellular pathology, which removed the seats of disease from the tissues, as taught by Bichat, to the individual elements, the cells.  The introduction of the use of the microscope in clinical work widened greatly our powers of diagnosis, and we obtained thereby a very much clearer conception of the actual processes of disease.  In another way, too, medicine was greatly helped by the rise of experimental pathology, which had been introduced by John Hunter, was carried along by Magendie and others, and reached its culmination in the epoch-making researches of Claude Bernard.  Not only were valuable studies made on the action of drugs, but also our knowledge of cardiac pathology was revolutionized by the work of Traube, Cohnheim and others.  In no direction did the experimental method effect such a revolution as in our knowledge of the functions of the brain.  Clinical neurology, which had received a great impetus by the studies of Todd, Romberg, Lockhart Clarke, Duchenne and Weir Mitchell, was completely revolutionized by the experimental work of Hitzig, Fritsch and Ferrier on the localization of functions in the brain.  Under Charcot, the school of French neurologists gave great accuracy to the diagnosis of obscure affections of the brain and spinal cord, and the combined results of the new anatomical, physiological and experimental work have rendered clear and definite what was formerly the most obscure and complicated section of internal medicine.  The end of 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.