Education, Medical -- Massachusetts -- 19th century; Homeopathy; Libraries, Medical -- Massachusetts -- 19th century; Medicine
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. It requires,
therefore, the cooperation of a large number of individuals to do the
work, and a large amount of money to pay for making its results public
through the press. When it is remembered that the catalogue of the
library of the British Museum is contained in nearly three thousand
large folios of manuscript, and not all its books are yet included, the
task of indexing any considerable branch of science or literature looks
as if it were well nigh impossible. But many hands make light work. An
“Index Society” has been formed in England, already numbering about one
hundred and seventy members. It aims at “supplying thorough indexes
to valuable works and collections which have hitherto lacked them; at
issuing indexes to the literature of special subjects; and at gathering
materials for a general reference index.” This society has published a
little treatise setting forth the history and the art of indexing, which
I trust is in the hands of some of our members, if not upon our shelves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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