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The Medical Digest *
Author(s) -
Richard Neale,
M. D. Lonck London
Publication year - 1896
Publication title -
british journal of dermatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.304
H-Index - 179
eISSN - 1365-2133
pISSN - 0007-0963
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2133.1896.tb16926.x
Subject(s) - medicine , family medicine
The Medical Digest.* Mr. Gladstone, in one of his moat recent non-political speeches, quotes that most learned ecclesiastic Dr. Dollinger's remark on Dr. William Smith's "Dictionary of the Church," that there was nothing like it in Germany. If we apply that quotation to the above work and say that there is nothing like it in the whole world of medical literature, we are well within the limits of truth. The book is the result of long years of patient work, which ought to have been done by some public state office, but which we owe to the determined perseverance of a member of that backbone of the profession, the general practitioner. Dr. Neale, by setting apart from the day's work a portion of time for this purpose, has succeeded in producing a volume which is not only useful but absolutely necessary to every man engaged in the busy routine of his profession. It has been stated that the " Medical Digest " is an index merely. This is a great mistake. It is not only an index of, but an absolute reference to the treatment of disease which is stored in our chief medical journals for the last fifty years. When we consider that in that time the greatest conceivable changes have taken place in our ideas of disease and our methods of treatment, it will be seen at once how large an obligation the profession is under to Dr. Neale. So great now is the pressure of work that a busy medical man can hardly find time to get through his journals in the week, much less remember all the practical points that they contain ; but the " Digest " does all this for him. Given an anxious case which does not get on, after all that the medical man himself knows has been done, he begins to think of aid from other brains than his, but before doing so he gives a glance at the Digest. Here he finds reference after reference to methods of treatment, and this not a mere index, but shrewdly compressed into a line, the pith of a whole dissertation. So our hard-pressed friend takes heart, and tries some of the many methods that lie open to him, and often, doubtless, with success and pleasure to himself and to hi3 patient.