might be called the botanical Mecca of the English-speaking world. - David Grandison Fairchild

In the field of medical science, the advent of the and have discredited the “” methods of a generation ago which lacked the factor of controls. The treated patient got well, but where was the untreated one? Maybe that case recovered also. And how about the hereditary set-up of resistance? The value of identical twins as offering material for control in medical experimentation is just beginning to be appreciated.

... one of my playmates, a boy of my own age, broke his leg while riding in the buggy with his father. His foot slipped from the dashboard and caught in the wheel. It was a , and our family physician shook his shaggy head as he said, “I fear that he cannot live.” The boy’s leg was amputated immediately. Later word came that gangrene had set in. And then the funeral.
To the medical profession of those days, a fracture which broke the skin, technically a compound fracture, meant almost certain death. Modern methods of disinfection were still unknown. In fact, it was not until seven years after this that I first heard the word “,” when my classmate painted for me a world filled with bacteria, floating particles in the air, microscopic plants. Only those of us who lived before the days of can realize what an amazing thought it seemed when first presented to the world.

Never to have seen anything but the is to have lived on the fringe of the world.