The President's Communication OCCASIONALLY there strides across the pages of history a figure that belongs to no particular locality yet whose environment brings about discoveries that are far reaching and of world-wide benefit. Such a man was Dr. John Gorrie of Apalachicola, Florida, the inventor of the process of making ice. Now, how many people, not in the ice business or medical profession, have heard of Dr. Gorrie? No biographies or elegies have ever been composed in his honor. He is an obscure figure, so much so that it is nothing more than fair that we undertake a thumb nail sketch of his career, the material for which we have culled from essays, addresses, ice and medical journals, hoping that it will be read with pleasure and profit. John Gorrie was born in 1802 on the same West Indian isle that produced Alexander Hamilton—Nevis, was carried to this country by his parents in 1803, and settled in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was educated in private schools. He later attended Fairfield Medical College, Herkimer County, New York, where he was graduated in 1827, well up in his class. At 123