Last fall, we shared news about further progress of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in making freely available for research, in PubMed Central (PMC), hundreds of back issues of historically significant biomedical journals, along with their human- and computer-readable citations. Since then, our NLM colleagues have added 22,000+ more articles in PMC, encompassing more than a dozen journal titles spanning the 19th and 20th centuries and falling under the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark. As with previously-released titles, PMC makes available for this additional corpus machine-readable full-text and metadata, including titles, authors, and any affiliations, as well as volume, issue, publication date, pagination, and license information. Such article-level digitization also enables us to link data—that is, to connect individual and associated articles with corresponding catalog records and sometimes even with Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)—to improve discoverability and use of the articles in research.
Historically significant biomedical journals newly added to PMC
Alexander Lambert, Chief Surgeon of the American Red Cross in France, inaugurated the Medical Bulletin with an inspiring Announcement, explaining that:
“To ‘gaze humanely out upon human kind’ and to act accordingly have always been the aims of the Red Cross. From the beginning of its existence it has endeavored to give help to the wounded of all nations. As the conception of this work has developed, so the breadth of its activities has enormously increased. From care in war it has extended its endeavors to the relief of sufferers from disasters and from epidemics of disease in time of peace.”
“As a further development of this humanitarian service, the American Red Cross, during the present great war, is endeavoring to extend aid to both military and civil populations alike. No one has ever questioned its right, even its duty, to care for the wounded soldier, or the sick soldier, or the one permanently disabled. The present commissioners of the Red Cross in France are prepared to go farther, for they believe that it is their duty to endeavor to assist, where their help is desired, in the scientific research of the medical men caring for the American troops, that by such aid in scientific work the troops may receive more quickly the benefit of increased medical and surgical knowledge, both in the prevention of disease and in its treatment.”
In addition to establishing a network of laboratories to support such research, Lambert explained further to readers that the Red Cross proposed to “disseminate the knowledge thus obtained more effectively” through periodic meetings of researchers, publishing their reports on the latest methods of treatment for war injuries and diseases, and establishing a library to collect and help preserve these reports.
Over the next two years, as hostilities of the Great War ceased, demobilization from Europe proceeded, and nations continued to come to grips with the human toll of the conflict, the Medical Bulletin and its successor titles delivered on Lambert’s original proposal. Articles published in the first volume of the Medical Bulletin alone reflect the diversity of subjects pertaining to surgery and wound and disease treatments, and means of disseminating research findings.
This word cloud offers a snapshot of the contents of the first volume based on its table of contents. It displays keywords based on their approximate proportion to their frequency in the titles of articles.
Subsequent issues of the Medical Bulletin contain equally impressive scopes of research and dissemination, each opening a window onto contemporary principles and practices of medicine.
As Alexander Lambert inspired his readers to explore the rich contents of the Medical Bulletin, we hope this spotlight will inspire you to explore its pages, along with all the newly-digitized titles, as well as the hundreds of titles previously released in PubMed Central. Use the comment feature below to tell us what you discover!
Jeffrey S. Reznick, PhD, is Senior Historian at the National Library of Medicine.
Kristina Dunne, is a recent Pathways intern at the National Library of Medicine.
