Excerpt from Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal, 1863, Vol. 15 The art of producing fire has been perhaps the greatest achieve ment of human intelligence. The use of fire lies at the root of almost every species of industry; it enables the savage to fell trees, as it allows civilized nations to work metals. The import ance is so great, that, deprived of it, man would perhaps scarcely have risen above the condition of the brute. The ancients were already sensible of this. Witness the fable of Prometheus. As to their sacred perpetual fire, its origin seems to lie in the dith culty of procuring it, thereby rendering its preservation essential. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.