New England Journal Of Medicine Turns 200

On Jan. 1, 1812, two Boston physicians, Dr. John Collins Warren and Dr. James Jackson, launched the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and the Collateral Branches of Science.

We know it today simply as the New England Journal of Medicine.

Back then, Collins and Warren met monthly to "sup and read and pass judgment on the papers submitted to them." The papers in that first 1812 issue carried titles such as "Remarks on Angina Pectoris," "Some Remarks on the Morbid Effects of Dentition" and "Case and Dissection of a Blue Female Child".

Fast forward 200 years to this week's issue, and you read papers on "Placebo-Controlled Trial of Oral Laquinimod for Multiple Sclerosis," "A 53-year old Man with Crohn's Disease, Fever and Bacteremia," and "Barium Aspiration."

The titles may still have the practical, maybe even jargon-y, tone of the science of yore, but today the New England Journal of Medicine is one of the most important, most influential scientific journals in the world.

However, as the journal's current editor-in-chief tells us, it wasn't always that way.

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