NEJM 200TH ANNIVERSARY

In 2012, the New England Journal of Medicinecelebrates 200 years of publishing advances in medical research and clinical practice. Throughout the year we will publish a series of anniversary articles that document the progress of medicine over the past 200 years. Visit the NEJM 200th Anniversary website, http://nejm200.nejm.org, to learn about the features and events we have planned. A Reader's Guide to 200 Years of the New England Journal of Medicine Allan M. Brandt, Ph.D. N Engl J Med 2012; 366:1-7January 5, 2012  Comments open through December 31, 2012 Article References Comments Audio Interview Interview with Allan Brandt on the first 200 years of theJournal as a window into the history of medicine, science, and society. (22:26) Listen Download With this issue, the New England Journal of Medicine marks its 200th anniversary. In January 1812, as the first issue came off the handset letterpress, few of its founders could have predicted such continuity and success. (See Figure 1FIGURE 1Illustration from “Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart and Lungs,” by John C. Warren, April 1, 1812, Issue of the Journal., from an 1812 issue.) John Collins Warren, the renowned Boston surgeon, his colleague James Jackson, a founder of Massachusetts General Hospital, and the small group of distinguished colleagues who joined them in starting the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, and the Collateral Branches of Science expressed modest and largely local aspirations for the enterprise. Boston, a growing urban center, and the wider New England environs had no medical journal of their own, although much medical knowledge and practice was considered region-specific. Although the name and format of the Journal would vary until 1928, 7 years after its ownership passed to the Massachusetts Medical Society, it remains the longest continuously published medical periodical in the world. The prospectus for the Journal, a call for papers issued in late 1811, explained the goals of Warren and his collaborators: “The editors have been encouraged to attempt this publication by the opinion, that a taste for medical literature has greatly increased in New England within a few years past. New methods of practice, good old ones which are not sufficiently known, and occasional investigations of the modes in common use, when thus distributed among our medical brethren in the country, will promote a disposition for inquiry and reflection, which cannot fail to produce the most happy results.”1