Bibliography of the History of Medicine (National Library of Medicine)

This very welcome bibliography-a by-product of Index medicus-was produced in the National Library of Medicine's Historical Division. Its citations were retrieved from the computer into which indexers now regularly feed information culled from the medical periodical literature. What a far remove this is from the Index's early days, almost ninety years ago, when only the unnatural faith of a publisher saved it from extinction. The Bibliography will appear annually and then in quinquennial cumulations. It will, incidentally, serve as a complement to the Weilcome Institute's Current Work in the History of Medicine. Wisely in this first issue the editors have made no attempt to apply value-judgments in selecting their citations, on the principle that most historians are capable of making up their own minds. Nevertheless, one can foresee that this policy, if pursued in the cumulations, will lead to confusion in the minds of many users simply because the core of good material will be in danger of submersion under a mass of derivative and mediocre articles. Perhaps this hazard might be reduced, when that time comes, by the introduction of many more subject headings of greater specificity than those used in this volume.