The New-York Historical Society the age of thirty we find him hanging out his shingle in Apalachicola, Florida, an important cotton market on the Gulf, and immediately interesting himself in civic life, serving as Treasurer, Mayor, and Chairman of the City Council, all the while assuming the duties of the leading doctor. Stationed at the United States Marine Hospital in Apalachicola, where yellow and malarial fevers were prevalent at the time, he noticed that the suffering was more intense on warm nights. So conscious was he that the ravages of these fevers could be controlled and relieved by air cooling that he turned his attention to the development of a method of ventilating a sick room. By means of an opening in the wall at floor level, a vent in the chimney, closing the doors and windows and placing ice in a container suspended from the ceiling, air was cooled, and being heavier, it descended, passing over the patient and out by way of the floor opening. There, in the sick wards of the United States Marine Hospital at Apalachicola, occurred the first process of air conditioning in all the world, as a method for the prevention and treatment of fevers. In 1839 Dr. Gorrie retired from the active practice of medicine so that he might further his investigation of air conditioning and refrigeration, writing several articles which appeared in the New Y»rk Lancet. On June 15, 1844, tne Apalachicola Commercial Advertiser carried an editorial about Dr. Gorrie's article "On the prevention of malarial diseases" and said: "We know of no want of mankind more urgent than the cheap means of producing an abundance of artificial cold. . . . The discovery and invention which our correspondent proposes to apply to this object are calculated to alter and extend the face of civilization." The invention was a machine to manufacture ice. The result was first publicly demonstrated late in June, 1850, at a banquet in the Mansion House, Apalachicola, which at the time was the second largest hotel in Florida. The occasion was the celebra- 124