A vision for organising the medical literature

Abstract

You’ve probably never heard of John Shaw Billings, even though it turns out he is something of a buried treasure. Billings served as a war surgeon for the Union Army in the American Civil War. But that isn’t why he is featured in this month’s JRSM. Neither is it because he was important enough for his obituary to be written by William Osler. Nor is Billings’ inclusion explained by his sage rules for medical writers. When Billings advised, ‘have something to say; say it; stop as soon as you’ve said it’, he said it as part of a 7000-word address. Neville Goodman explains this apparent contradiction by noting that medical publishing is not what it was in the 19th century.¹

No doubt, however, that Billings was aware that his words were published. He was a master cataloguer of the medical literature. After a busy day at his hospital, he’d take home piles of journals to read and mark articles for his copyist to transfer to file cards. This industry produced the first version of Index-Catalogue, which is the forerunner of Index-Medicus. Goodman believes that to describe Billings as ‘the father of the Index’ is underplaying his role.

Billings was something of a visionary to understand the importance of cataloguing the medical literature. But the predictions of even the most eminent among us are often wrong. While correctly predicting an unstoppable increase in the number of medical books and articles, Billings guessed that by the 21st century ‘our libraries will become large cities … when it will require the services of everyone in the world, not engaged in writing, to catalogue, and care for the annual product’.

Despite this little misstep, Billings deserves acclaim and acknowledgement for his role in organising the medical literature. His vision of the future albeit implausible might seem heavenly in comparison to the reality that is covered elsewhere in this issue: of failures to protect humanitarian workers,² controversies over seven-day access to primary care services³ and difficulties in providing emergency care to people at the extremes of age.⁴ What, you might ask, would John Shaw Billings do in the face of today’s challenges to health professionals? I think he would roll his sleeves up and look for order amid the chaos.

References

Goodman NW. John Shaw Billings: creator of Index Medicus and medical visionary. J R Soc Med 2018; 111: 99–103.

Bowsher G, Gibson-Fall F and Bernard R. Negotiating the humanitarian space: new opportunities for action and researcH. J R Soc Med 2018; 111: 81–83.

Rosenberg-Wohl S, Greenfield G, Majeed A and Hayhoe B. Seven-day access to NHS primary care: how does England compare with Europe? J R Soc Med 2018; 111: 88–92.

Minhas JS, Minhas D, Coats T, Banerjee J and Roland D. Five-year forward view: lessons from emergency care at the extremes of age. J R Soc Med 2018; 111: 93–98.