This AP column on 200 years of the New England Journal of Medicne sent us to the NEJM website, where we discovered this great interactive timeline. Check it out. History of Medical Discoveries | NEJM.
The column points out the journal’s high points, cited above. But also notes a few of the lows:
When Harvard Medical School debated admitting female students in 1878, the journal expressed concern about men and women mingling during surgeries normally witnessed only by one sex. The school didn’t admit women until 1945, when World War II caused a shortage of men.
The journal also agreed with mandatory sterilization of “mental defectives” in the early 20th century. “Most alarming,” Brandt writes, was its declaration in 1934 that “Germany is perhaps the most progressive nation in restricting fecundity among its unfit.” The journal later condemned Nazi medicine.
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