cord...there is scarcely a modern discovery which by anticipation cannot be found in their writings."
Osler referred to the importance of observation throughout his career: "...The art of medicine Hippocrates with all his genius did not get beyond highly trained observation, and a conception of disease as a process of Nature."
Osler then spoke of the twilight and darkness of Greece and the coming of the Renaissance: "...Then something happened-how, who can tell? The light failed or flickered almost to extinction. Greece died into a medievalism that for centuries enthralled man in chains, the weary length of which still hampers his progress...in the inventions of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, modern science took its origin. The growth of the experimental method changed the outlook of mankind and led directly to the development of the physical and biological sciences by which the modern world has been transformed."
Osler continued the speech by telling of the advances of science and praised the unknown contributors to our knowledge: "...Silent workers, often unknown and neglected by their generation, these men have kept alive the fires on the altar of science, and have so opened the doors of knowledge that we now know the love of health and disease. Time will only permit me to refer to a few of the more important of the measures of man's physical redemption.
Osler, with intense interest, told of the great advance of anesthesia in Boston: "On the morning of October 16, 1884, in the Amphitheatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, a new Prometheus gave a gift as rich as that of fire, the greatest single gift ever made to suffering humanity...the introduction of anesthesia." Next Osler mentioned, "...the prevention of disease through the growth of modern sanitary science
