“The Days of Giants”

  1. Henry L. Mencken

    Every schoolboy, I suppose, has heard by this time of Dr. [Oliver Wendell] Holmes' famous address before the Massachusetts Medical Society on May 30, 1860, in which he argued that “if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes”; but what the pedagogues always fail to tell their poor dupes is that he made a categorical exception of wine, which he ranked with opium, quinine, anesthetics and mercury among the sovereign and invaluable boons to humanity.

    Henry L. Mencken

    “The Days of Giants”

    Submitted by: Dr. Daniel Musher

    Baylor College of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Medical Center; Houston, TX 77030

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    1. Ann Intern Med October 15, 1997 vol. 127 no. 8 Part 1 647
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