Eureka moments.

Winter 2004 A ll truths are easy to understand once they are discovered,” wrote astronomer Galileo Galilei. “The point is to discover them.” The 17th-century Italian is best known as the inventor of the telescope, but if he’d been drawn to the life sciences instead of the physical sciences, he might have conceived of the microscope. As it was, the idea of using lenses to see tiny rather than faraway objects was left to Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch inventor who is credited with constructing the first microscope in the 1670s, three decades after Galileo died. Nevertheless, the Italian’s observation about the process of discovery is just as pertinent to biomedical science as it is to astronomy and physics—not to mention every bit as true today as it was when he penned the thought close to 400 years ago. In fact, sages of more recent vintage have wrapped the same concept in slightly different words. In the 19th century, American naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote: “The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature causes the unknown to reveal themselves.” And 20th-century Russian-born writer Isaac Asimov, who was not a scientist himself but whose novels realistically probed the future of science and technology, wrote: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!), but ‘That’s funny . . .’” Actually, careful readers of this magazine may be saying “That’s funny . . .” right now, as they look at the page facing this essay. The section that used to fall opposite this “Editor’s Note” was called “Vital Signs.” It was a catchall institutional news section that contained an assortment of stories about research findings, clinical advances, human interest tidbits, educational programs, and more. But since medicine—especially its expression at Dartmouth—is a vibrant, growing enterprise, there’s been more and more such news to share in recent years. Just as a patient’s vital signs—heart rate, blood pressure, and so on—are a measure of an individual’s health, so, too, has the growing depth and richness of our “Vital Signs” section represented a measure of the institution’s health. But finally we had a “eureka moment”: the section had simply become too sprawling. So starting EDITOR Dana Cook Grossman