the most important medical milestones
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Seeking a way to mark the launch of the new BMJ, we hit on the idea of looking back at the most important medical milestones since the forerunner of the BMJ was first published in 1840. We asked readers to nominate milestones, which you did in good numbers. A panel of editors and advisers narrowed the field down from more than 70 to 15. We invited champions to write on each one; their contributions make up this commemorative supplement.
Medicine is about stories—the patient’s account, the doctor’s interpretation, the detective work of diagnosis, the research journey—and these 15 accounts are all good stories. They combine all the elements of good fiction: serendipity in the discovery of penicillin (p s6) and x rays (p s12); sheer determination in the development of tissue culture (p s18); raw personal ambition—the emergence of ether as an anaesthetic owed much to one dentist’s desire to advance his position (p s5); competition in the publication race over chlorpromazine (p s7); drama in turning off the Broad Street pump (p s17); and tragedy in the death of a friend, which led Semmelweis to his discovery (p s11).
Some of the 15 may surprise you. Does it make sense to give milestone status to evidence based medicine? Perhaps it says something about the culture of medicine that an effort to systematise our relation with science should have proved so controversial. As Kay Dickersin and colleagues say (p s10), how can something so intuitively obvious to lay people—the need to make decisions on the best available evidence—not be similarly viewed by clinicians? You’ll also no doubt find omissions. Jeffrey Koplan finds several when he compared our list with one he initiated for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eight years ago (p s20). I’ve found some too. Where are aspirin, Helicobacter pylori, and Medline?
But which of these 15—all extraordinary medical advances—will come out top? By the time this supplement is printed, a winner will have been chosen by BMJ readers in an online poll (see bmj.com). In terms of number of lives saved, vaccines (p s19) seem hard to beat; if it’s societal consequences, then the pill might be the winner. /.../
Seeking a way to mark the launch of the new BMJ, we hit on the idea of looking back at the most important medical milestones since the forerunner of the BMJ was first published in 1840. We asked readers to nominate milestones, which you did in good numbers. A panel of editors and advisers narrowed the field down from more than 70 to 15. We invited champions to write on each one; their contributions make up this commemorative supplement.
Medicine is about stories—the patient’s account, the doctor’s interpretation, the detective work of diagnosis, the research journey—and these 15 accounts are all good stories. They combine all the elements of good fiction: serendipity in the discovery of penicillin (p s6) and x rays (p s12); sheer determination in the development of tissue culture (p s18); raw personal ambition—the emergence of ether as an anaesthetic owed much to one dentist’s desire to advance his position (p s5); competition in the publication race over chlorpromazine (p s7); drama in turning off the Broad Street pump (p s17); and tragedy in the death of a friend, which led Semmelweis to his discovery (p s11).
Some of the 15 may surprise you. Does it make sense to give milestone status to evidence based medicine? Perhaps it says something about the culture of medicine that an effort to systematise our relation with science should have proved so controversial. As Kay Dickersin and colleagues say (p s10), how can something so intuitively obvious to lay people—the need to make decisions on the best available evidence—not be similarly viewed by clinicians? You’ll also no doubt find omissions. Jeffrey Koplan finds several when he compared our list with one he initiated for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eight years ago (p s20). I’ve found some too. Where are aspirin, Helicobacter pylori, and Medline?
But which of these 15—all extraordinary medical advances—will come out top? By the time this supplement is printed, a winner will have been chosen by BMJ readers in an online poll (see bmj.com). In terms of number of lives saved, vaccines (p s19) seem hard to beat; if it’s societal consequences, then the pill might be the winner. /.../
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