Educatione ad excelentiam--ten years of the Croatian medical journal.

Although the earliest memories fade first, those of the CMJ remain vivid, perhaps because they coincided with the tragic aggression against Croatia in 1991. Actually, the life of the Journal began before it was officially born. Preparation of the first issue, planned for March 1992 (Fig. 1), was well under way when the first attacks on Croatian cities began in the early autumn of 1991 (1). We witnessed enormous suffering of the civilian population: refuge, killings and wounding, and siege and destruction of many Croatian towns. Health care professionals, although without formal training in war medicine, managed to adapt to the war situation and provide adequate care for the war casualties (2). We wanted to document the experience and knowledge Croatian physicians had gained in war medicine and decided to produce a special supplement to the first journal issue (Fig. 2). It required a huge amount of work and efforts, especially in the circumstances when it was too complicated to get even the simplest task done, such as prepare the cover page. We worked on the supplement’s covers at a printing house in Zagreb during a blackout. Under the dim light, the printers could not see well which colors they mixed and the red cross on the front page picture came out green. Nevertheless, we could still laugh and make jokes, despite all the problems.