Excerpt from Progress and Problems, in Preventive Medicine
These important conceptions and discoveries marked the opening of an era unparalleled in the history of the world for steady and substantial progress in every branch of human endeavor.
Each generation retells the story of past achievements in its own way. The use of ether for the relief of pain has become one of those twice told tales which it is a pleasure to recall and an honor to relate. The story itself, however, full as it is of human interest and dramatic elements, will not here be repeated, for it seems more to the purpose to consider some of the progress which in no small part was made possible by the introduction of the experimental method as exemplified in the discovery of ether and its application as an anesthetic.
A Constructive Program.
Formerly hygienic and sanitary measures were based almost solely upon a negative program. This was necessarily so because we had to await the exact observations of Pasteur before the sanitary sciences could be placed upon a sound basis of fact. The old books of hygiene were full of fads and fancies. By the old books I do not mean ancient tomes, but the books which were regarded as authority when I was a medical student. The whole sanitary system was then a vague or confused jumble and an uncertain guide. The system was an assemblage of sanitary dont"s. We were told what not to do, in order to avoid infection, or to improve our bodily vigor. When the sanitarian of yesterday did depart from this negative program and ventured to give counsel of a positive character, it turned out to be mostly guesswork and very often wrong.
When I was a boy they told me not to catch cold, but they could not tell me what to do in order not to catch cold, and if they did it was mostly poor advice.
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