[PDF][PDF] PURPOSES IN MEDICAL RESEARCH: An Introduction to the Journal of Clinical Investigation

AE Cohn - The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 1924 - Am Soc Clin Investig
AE Cohn
The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 1924Am Soc Clin Investig
Custom has varied in the history of medical journalism; certain journals were introduced to
their readers without explicit statements by their editors of the purposes which the new
publications were to serve. In these instances it was left to chance or to the general
knowledge of the-contemporary public to find within its pagesa justification for the new
venture. Other journals have been explicit in the avowal of their objects. Both methods have
advantages; both have disadvantages. In a discipline as old as medicine, which has …
Custom has varied in the history of medical journalism; certain journals were introduced to their readers without explicit statements by their editors of the purposes which the new publications were to serve. In these instances it was left to chance or to the general knowledge of the-contemporary public to find within its pagesa justification for the new venture. Other journals have been explicit in the avowal of their objects. Both methods have advantages; both have disadvantages. In a discipline as old as medicine, which has continuously engaged the profound interest of men for as many centuries as has any of the other subjects in which men have exercised curiosity and the desire for knowledge, it is fitting in the interests of definiteness and with the view of making an exact statement of our conceptions, as well as in attempting to anticipate the natural inquiry of our contemporaries, to define the motives which suggest this new publication.
There is a pitfall here, which should be avoided. In the attempt to explain the purposes which actuate the publication of a new journal, the impulse may be, as Naunynl pointed out in the case of Wunder-lich, to make too precise the limits within which the thought which underlies the undertaking is to be confined. The doors in medicine must naturally be kept open so that influences, no matter wh&ce de-rived, may contribute their share to the understanding and elucida-tion of the problems which constitute the proper province of medicine. But that a danger lies here history has made amply apparent. For there has never been a time either in the ancient or in the modern world when medicine was far removed from the influences of neighbor-
The Journal of Clinical Investigation