Magyar László szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 174-177. (Budapest, 2001)
KÖZLEMÉNYEK — COMMUNICATIONS - Tricot, Jean-Paul: The memory of today in the history of medicne. — (A ma emlékezete az orvostörténelemben.)
The goal of preserving the memory of contemporary medicine in the future may be achieved by selecting the relevant information, sharing the tasks, fixing some period after which relevant innovations, discoveries and changes are worth noticing and, choosing a good support system which can be consulted even in the year 3000. How should we select relevant medico-historical information? Reading some of the ten leading medical journals we have to realize all the submitted articles were peer-reviewed, often more than 90% of them rejected, less than 10 % of these remaining sent back to the authors for all kinds of correction and only then published. Each copy of such a high ranked journal has also an outstanding, selected and original content; Let's take as an example one of the last numbers of The Lancet, more precisely Vol 357, N°9265 of Saturday 28 th April 2001, just a few weeks ago. The amount of information in one number of such ajournai is stupefying. Let's analyze in detail one copy: Concerning medical treatment we also read a panoply of articles about the value of some vaccines and drugs: rejection of the link between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism; persistance of sulfonilamide resistance despite prescribing restrictions; the inutility of an ACE inhibitor treatment in the reduction of restenosis after coronary stenting; the unavailability of AIDS-treatment in South-Africa; the dilemna of pain-treatment or notreatment in terminal ill patients. Five other very interesting articles are specifically devoted to surgery and gynaecology. Some articles are country-linked: epilepsy control in SouthIndia, yellow fever threat in the same country etc. The correspondence is also quite interesting. Many of these top journals try to reach a certain cultural level. So we can read in the cited number of The Lancet an interview with an Hungarian scientist, László Ötvös, to whom the Hungarian Academy of Sciences accorded the DSc degree in 1993, now working at the Whistlar Institute of Philadelphia, NJ, USA. You can find a circumstantional presentation of 'The centennial exhibition of the Nobel Prize ', organized in Stockholm and some explanations about a disgarded diagnosis, 'hospitalism '. In short, every number of every leading medical journal is quite like an encyclopaedia. Medical historians will certainly need some reflection before being able to judge what were the very important health achievements over a longer lapse of time like a decennium or a century. The year surveys published at the end of each year by the leading medical journals are to fragmentary and to close to the events to be considered as immediate relevant historical sources. Very recently a 750 pages thick book was published in England with the very ambitious title 'Medicine in the 20th Century'. In the foreword the editors, Roger Cooler and John Pickstone acknowledge how difficult it is to divide some periods and for instance to select the so-called important events in the last quarter of the century. On the other hand the classification of the history of medicine based upon the different centuries is also somewhat artificial. Nowadays teaching history of medicine is not a sinecure. Actually there is certainly no tendency to create new chairs of the history of medicine. Why not come back to some old (and good) habits. Why not convince all professors of the medical faculties to begin their course with a short historical approach of the subject they will treat. In the same way investigators should always start by getting thoroughly acquainted with not only the recent but also the old, so-called historical literature on their subject.
