- Email: [email protected]
THE BMJ, 1840 TO
849
9. Pineda CJ, Guerra J Jr, Weisman MH, Resnick D, Martinez-Lavin M. The skeletal manifestations of clubbing: a study in patients with cyanotic congenital heart disease and hypertrophic osteoarthropathy. Semin Arthritis Rheum 1985; 14: 263-73. 10. Dickinson CJ, Martin JF. Megakaryocytes and platelet clumps as the cause of finger clubbing. Lancet 1987; ii: 1434-35. 11. Braegger CP, Corrigan CJ, MacDonald TT. Finger clubbing and tumour necrosis factor &agr;. Lancet 1990; 336: 759-60. 12. Currie AE, Gallagher PJ. The pathology of clubbing: vascular changes in the nail bed. Br J Dis Chest 1988; 82: 382-85. 13. Wilson GM. Local circulatory changes associated with clubbing of the fingers and toes. Q J Med 1952; 21: 201-14.
THE BMJ, 1840 TO ...
concludes that Hart’s reappointment rules out financial misdemeanour as the reason, yet implies that his return would have been perfectly compatible with the suspicion (never more) that he murdered his wife. Hart’s health was fragile yet he was a great globetrotter in an age when that meant slow boats. Orchestras can play perfectly without conductors, of course, but the players get less than their share of attention here. Of Homer, this book has hardly a kind word: that he overstayed his usefulness (other medical editors have done that) and was no trend-setter are not in dispute. Bartrip writes: "If Michael Foot had Homer in mind when he wrote of the ’powerful and opinionated he was lamentably far from the editor’ of the BMJ truth". Yet Bartrip knows perfectly well that Foot would have been referring to the de facto editor of the journal during the controversy that preceded the birth of the National Health Service, the much more combative Clegg. It is good to see the "Gold-Headed Cane" incident placed in its proper perspective. An Association journal can never be entirely independent, and Clegg’s victory before the British Medical Association’s Council cemented that principle. The journal’s editors have to hope that official BMA policy on an issue they might wish to dispute editorially is non-existent or too woolly to warrant a charge of disloyalty-and it usually will be. Bartrip misses out on the Family Doctor row2 but up to the point when he lays down his pen he has otherwise written a thorough, frank account of the fomative years and development of a journal that, despite its name, is now rightly respected worldwide not only as an organ for the dissemination of important medical science but also as a sharp commentator on the medicosocial scene. The celebrations will have made press days in Tavistock Square more than usually hectic. Next week normality will return, for readers care little about jamborees. So, from friends in Bedford Square, all good wishes, plus a small token of continued competitive,
unexplained. Bartrip
...
The Lancet entirely failed to note the birth of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal on Oct 3, 1840. An early Victorian instance of sibling rivalry? We hope not. If we forget a head-on collision in the 19th century, affable
competition has been more the tone, and today the editorial staffs of the British Medical Journal and The Lancet are most likely to fall out over the rules of croquet. So to our younger sister, the latest entrant to a select sesquicentenary journal club, felicitations. This week Tavistock Square has rung with the cries of merrymakers attending the BMJ’s mini festival of arts and medicine, marking this notable birthday. Too much ink on the cover? A misprint in the second editorial? Regrettable, but next week is what matters, and the one after. Journals look forward or they wither. On special occasions, however-and this is surely one-a backward glance is allowable. The BMJ has chosen Peter Bartrip of Wolfson College, Oxford, for the task.1 His book is in effect a tale of four men, the editors Emest Hart, Dawson Williams, Gerald Homer, and Hugh Clegg, a quartet who well illustrate that to succeed as an editor it may help not to be very nice. Hart publicly acknowledged that a good journalist needs enemies; he was one and had plenty of the other. Bartrip covers only 125 years, leaving a few pages for the current editor, the nice and successful Dr Stephen Lock, to bring the account up to date. Bartrip makes judgments of BMJ editors not wholly supported by the footnotes, in which he wades ankle-deep. Few would dispute that Hart was both a fine editor and a rascal (or worse). His brief absence from the editorial chair remains
friendship. 1. Mirror of Medicine: a History of the BMJ. By P. W. J. Bartrip. Oxford: British Medical Journal and Clarendon Press. 1990. Pp 338. ISBN 019-261844X. £35 (£29 or £33 [non-UK] for BMA members). 2. Swinscow TDV. Reap a destiny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Two editorial homes. A bat!k
(by Kate
Sharpe), presented
to the BMJ for
Oct 3, 1990
9. Pineda CJ, Guerra J Jr, Weisman MH, Resnick D, Martinez-Lavin M. The skeletal manifestations of clubbing: a study in patients with cyanotic congenital heart disease and hypertrophic osteoarthropathy. Semin Arthritis Rheum 1985; 14: 263-73. 10. Dickinson CJ, Martin JF. Megakaryocytes and platelet clumps as the cause of finger clubbing. Lancet 1987; ii: 1434-35. 11. Braegger CP, Corrigan CJ, MacDonald TT. Finger clubbing and tumour necrosis factor &agr;. Lancet 1990; 336: 759-60. 12. Currie AE, Gallagher PJ. The pathology of clubbing: vascular changes in the nail bed. Br J Dis Chest 1988; 82: 382-85. 13. Wilson GM. Local circulatory changes associated with clubbing of the fingers and toes. Q J Med 1952; 21: 201-14.
THE BMJ, 1840 TO ...
concludes that Hart’s reappointment rules out financial misdemeanour as the reason, yet implies that his return would have been perfectly compatible with the suspicion (never more) that he murdered his wife. Hart’s health was fragile yet he was a great globetrotter in an age when that meant slow boats. Orchestras can play perfectly without conductors, of course, but the players get less than their share of attention here. Of Homer, this book has hardly a kind word: that he overstayed his usefulness (other medical editors have done that) and was no trend-setter are not in dispute. Bartrip writes: "If Michael Foot had Homer in mind when he wrote of the ’powerful and opinionated he was lamentably far from the editor’ of the BMJ truth". Yet Bartrip knows perfectly well that Foot would have been referring to the de facto editor of the journal during the controversy that preceded the birth of the National Health Service, the much more combative Clegg. It is good to see the "Gold-Headed Cane" incident placed in its proper perspective. An Association journal can never be entirely independent, and Clegg’s victory before the British Medical Association’s Council cemented that principle. The journal’s editors have to hope that official BMA policy on an issue they might wish to dispute editorially is non-existent or too woolly to warrant a charge of disloyalty-and it usually will be. Bartrip misses out on the Family Doctor row2 but up to the point when he lays down his pen he has otherwise written a thorough, frank account of the fomative years and development of a journal that, despite its name, is now rightly respected worldwide not only as an organ for the dissemination of important medical science but also as a sharp commentator on the medicosocial scene. The celebrations will have made press days in Tavistock Square more than usually hectic. Next week normality will return, for readers care little about jamborees. So, from friends in Bedford Square, all good wishes, plus a small token of continued competitive,
unexplained. Bartrip
...
The Lancet entirely failed to note the birth of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal on Oct 3, 1840. An early Victorian instance of sibling rivalry? We hope not. If we forget a head-on collision in the 19th century, affable
competition has been more the tone, and today the editorial staffs of the British Medical Journal and The Lancet are most likely to fall out over the rules of croquet. So to our younger sister, the latest entrant to a select sesquicentenary journal club, felicitations. This week Tavistock Square has rung with the cries of merrymakers attending the BMJ’s mini festival of arts and medicine, marking this notable birthday. Too much ink on the cover? A misprint in the second editorial? Regrettable, but next week is what matters, and the one after. Journals look forward or they wither. On special occasions, however-and this is surely one-a backward glance is allowable. The BMJ has chosen Peter Bartrip of Wolfson College, Oxford, for the task.1 His book is in effect a tale of four men, the editors Emest Hart, Dawson Williams, Gerald Homer, and Hugh Clegg, a quartet who well illustrate that to succeed as an editor it may help not to be very nice. Hart publicly acknowledged that a good journalist needs enemies; he was one and had plenty of the other. Bartrip covers only 125 years, leaving a few pages for the current editor, the nice and successful Dr Stephen Lock, to bring the account up to date. Bartrip makes judgments of BMJ editors not wholly supported by the footnotes, in which he wades ankle-deep. Few would dispute that Hart was both a fine editor and a rascal (or worse). His brief absence from the editorial chair remains
friendship. 1. Mirror of Medicine: a History of the BMJ. By P. W. J. Bartrip. Oxford: British Medical Journal and Clarendon Press. 1990. Pp 338. ISBN 019-261844X. £35 (£29 or £33 [non-UK] for BMA members). 2. Swinscow TDV. Reap a destiny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Two editorial homes. A bat!k
(by Kate
Sharpe), presented
to the BMJ for
Oct 3, 1990