Who
wants a lock without a key, a ship without a rudder, a binnacle without a
compass, a check without a signature, a greenback without a goldback
behind it?
I have referred chiefly to the medical journals, but I would include with
these the reports of medical associations, and those separate
publications which, coming in the form of pamphlets, heap themselves into
chaotic piles and bundles which are worse than useless, taking up a great
deal of room, and frightening everything away but mice and mousing
antiquarians, or possibly at long intervals some terebrating specialist.
Arranged, bound, indexed, all these at once become accessible and
valuable. I will take the first instance which happens to suggest
itself. How many who know all about osteoblasts and the experiments of
Ollier, and all that has grown out of them, know where to go for a paper
by the late Dr. A. L. Peirson of Salem, published in the year 1840, under
the modest title, Remarks on Fractures? And if any practitioner who has
to deal with broken bones does not know that most excellent and practical
essay, it is a great pity, for it answers very numerous questions which
will be sure to suggest themselves to the surgeon and the patient as no
one of the recent treatises, on my own shelves, at least, can do.
But if indexing is the special need of our time in medical literature, as
in every department of knowledge, it must be remembered that it is not
only an immense labor, but one that never ends.
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