Helping physicians to keep abreast of the medical literature: Andrew Duncan and Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 1773–1795

Andrew Duncan began his publishing career in 1772, with observations on the use of mercury for treating venereal disease. Thereafter he produced a substantial published output – on therapeutics, materia medica, pathology, reports of cases seen at the Edinburgh Public Dispensary, and biographical commentaries on his colleagues. However, Duncan’s most successful publishing venture was his Medical and Philosophical Commentaries (hereafter, the Commentaries). In the Commentaries, Duncan endeavoured to meet needs which remain inadequately met even today: namely, how can doctors be helped to cope with cascades of clinical literature. There had been some attempts in the 17th century to respond to the needs of busy people for relevant research information. Weekly Memorials (1682) and Medicina Curiosa (1684) contained abstracts of articles and books published elsewhere. The contents of the former were mostly non-medical, however, and the latter ceased publication after only two issues. In 1733, a publication entitled Medical Essays and Observations was launched by ‘a Society in Edinburgh’ which had been instituted in 1731 for the improvement of medical knowledge. The secretary of the society was Alexander Monro primus, the first Professor of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, and he was almost certainly the author of the preface. As explained in the preface, this initiative reflected a concern that, because the preparation and publication of a book was a major undertaking, important observations were not being reported because doctors were not prepared to take on the work of communicating them in book format (Introduction). In addition, there was a felt need for a publication specifically for medical matters, and one which considered the applicability of observations made in other parts of the world to the climatic and other circumstances of Scotland. Each issue of the new periodical was to contain registers of climatic measurements in Edinburgh and accounts of the diseases which had been epidemic and ‘most universal’ there; observations and essays onmedical subjects; figures illustrating instruments, pathological specimens, etc.; and lists of medical books, published or in press. Each volume also included accounts of ‘the most remarkable Improvements and Discoveries in Physick’ which had been made since the previous issue. This element comes nearest to the purposes of Andrew Duncan’s Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, but it only used between 1 and 10% of the pages in each volume of Medical Essays and Observations, which was principally a vehicle for clinical and pathological case reports. Medical Essays and Observations was published in five volumes, until 1744, after which the disruption caused by the Jacobite rebellion meant that no further volumes were published. In 1754, Essays and Observations Physical and Literary was launched, inspired by the example of Medical Essays and Observations, again by ‘a Society in Edinburgh’. It appeared in three volumes (the last published in 1771) and published papers that had been ‘read before the Society’. In addition to medicine, Essays and Observations Physical and Literary covered topics as various as astronomy, botany, earthquakes and the benefits of shallow ploughing, but it had no section specifically designed to comment on advances or recently published books. Although Medical Essays and Observations must have had some influence on Andrew Duncan’s decision to launch Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, the principal model for his plan for the new publication seems likely to have been Commentarii de rebus in scientia naturali et medicina gestis – a periodical containing abstracts of scientific Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine; 2019, Vol. 112(1) 36–47