The Value of Medical Publications: ‘To Read Them Would … Burden the Memory to No Useful Purpose’

In 1782 William Black published his Historical Sketch of Medicine and Surgery , in which he addressed the subject of medical publications and their value. He doubted whether even one physician in a thousand managed to add ‘one iota of information to the medical fund’ and whether more than a tiny fraction of medical publications over the centuries had contained ‘any material discovery for useful improvement’ in medical knowledge. The debate on the value of published material and the explosion of medical publication continues: the National Library of Medicine search service now has access to 9 million articles on MEDLINE, from 3900 current medical journals. Easy identification and retrieval of relevant and worthwhile information remain major obstacles for the clinician despite advances in electronic information systems. Black’s concerns about medical publications, concerns that echoed the more general doubts of philosopher Voltaire quoted in the title, appear to be timeless.