The Britannica adds so largely to medical literature that, in outlining the services which the work can render to those engaged in the prevention and treatment of disease, it is desirable to define the limits, rather than to insist upon the extent, of the plan adopted by the technical assistant editors to whom the Editor-in-chief entrusted the control of this important part of the undertaking. It is true that the 644 medical articles, many of which might be described as books in themselves, cover the whole field of anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, surgery, pharmacology, medical education, medical jurisprudence and medical biography. It is also true that the writers who sign these articles are specialists of world-wide authority, and that the total number of words and illustrations in these articles is as great as would be required for a complete encyclopaedic hand-book of medical science. But, notwithstanding all this wealth of matter and of international collaboration, the Britannica does not profess to take the place of the elementary working library in daily use by every professional man. “Working library” is, however, an elastic term, and it is used here to mean only the handbooks which constitute an irreducible minimum, the few without which no beginner would venture to establish himself in practice. Certain manuals are, to the practitioner, what mathematical tables are to the engineer; and it is not the function of the Britannica to duplicate what the practitioner already possesses, nor yet, for example, to include a pharmacopoeia in a book used by the general public.
The Encyclopaedic Method
On the other hand, no professional man restricts himself a day longer than he must to the bare modicum of medical literature with which he may have been forced, at first, to do his best; and when he can add anything to it, there is nothing he will use so often, or find so helpful, as the Britannica. It may be well to define in general, its professional uses, before dealing in detail with the articles included in this course of reading.
(1) The system of technical collaboration is, in the Britannica, organized and coördinated with a completeness which gives the medical articles an authority and impartiality often lacking in isolated treatises. The contributors were selected with a view to their recognized ability only, whereas the publication of medical works is too often an outcome of the writer’s ambitions, which, however legitimate they may be, are no proof of his capacity.
(2) The Britannica articles were written for the sole purpose of being used in their present form. A great part of current medical literature originates in lectures to students, and retains too much of its first form to be satisfactory to the professional man.
(3) The articles are all based upon an original and recent survey of knowledge, and thus contain information which cannot be found in reprints of standard medical works insufficiently brought up to date by additions to earlier editions.
(4) In relation to statistics, to administrative and legislative provisions regarding public health, to hospitals and other public institutions, the broadly international character of the Britannica, with its contributions from twenty different countries, gives a scope which the private writer cannot attain.
(5) The great number of biographies of physicians, surgeons and men who devote themselves exclusively to research, gives professional men access to information which they cannot elsewhere obtain.
(6) Chemistry, bacteriology, general biology, botany, psychology and other sciences allied to the more immediate field of medicine are fully treated by specialists of the highest authority.
(7) Apart from the definite occupational diseases (fully discussed in the Britannica), there is often a relation between the pathological results of overwork and the routine of the patient’s business life. Every branch of industry and commerce is treated in detail in the Britannica, and the insight which the physician may thus gain will often be of service to him.