Medical literature

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Biomedical literature
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Plates vi & vii of the Edwin Smith Papyrus at the Rare Book Room, New York Academy of Medicine

Medical literature is the scientific literature of medicine: articles in journals and texts in books devoted to the field of medicine. Many references to the medical literature include the health care literature generally, including that of dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, nursing, and the allied health professions.

Contemporary and historic views regarding diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of medical conditions have been documented for thousands of years. The

Edwin Smith papyrus is the first known medical treatise
. Ancient medical literature often described inflictions related to warfare.

History

Statuette of Imhotep in the Louvre

Throughout history, people have written about diseases, how

Medical Compendium in Seven Books
).

Following

Vesalius, William Harvey, Ignaz Semmelweis, Louis Pasteur, and others, the medical community have changed the way it conducts research. After incorporating the scientific method, medical literature has introduced peer review
, and is currently divided into journals and textbooks.

Medical journal

These are publications in which the medical community shares information. The common articles are original articles, reviews and case reports.

Instances

When looking for specific information in any journal one can use the

National Library of Medicine's PubMed database. Peer reviewed journals
are ranked higher thus are a better source for medical information than non-peer reviewed journals.

Medical textbooks

A medical manual is

Edwin Smith papyrus
of ancient Egypt.

After

diseases and their diagnosis, therapy and prognosis. The first textbook to utilize experts to write specific chapters within the book was the Cecil Textbook of Medicine edited by Russell Cecil
, MD in 1927. The book was an immediate international success because of the idea that single or double author medical books was outmoded, "since the scope of medical knowledge was far surpassing the capacity of any single individual to encompass". Since that time, this has been the standard. Examples are:

Harrison's Principal of Internal Medicine is widely considered the most read textbook of medicine ever. It was able to eclipse Cecil's by changing the organization. Instead of organizing by disease,

Tinsley Harrison organized the book by region and symptom, allowing students to learn the myriad causes of a patient's symptom, without first knowing the specific disease. Harrison's is also credited for a strong commitment to linking basic science to clinical medicine.[8][9]

Medical journalism

Health-related information is often disseminated to the public via mainstream media outlets; these reports influence doctors, the general public, and the government. According to one study of 500 US health news stories, between 62 and 77% failed to adequately address costs, harms, benefits, the quality of the evidence, and the existence of other options.

Health News Review in the U.S. and Media Doctor in Australia.[12]

Internet

Most prominent journals and textbooks are currently available

on-line or via CD-ROM. Certain online services including Medscape
and MDLinx offer aggregated digests of new articles from prominent medical journals.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Medicine in Ancient and Medieval Times". College of St. Cosmas.
  2. ^ Watrall, Ethan. "Asclepion, a World Wide Web page devoted to the study of ancient medicine".
  3. ^ Watrall, Ethan. "Medicine in Ancient Egypt".
  4. PMID 21569508
    .
  5. ^ "Cecil Textbook of Medicine". Archived from the original on 2010-06-16. Retrieved 2007-02-21.
  6. ^ Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine Archived 2006-08-21 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "Oxford Textbook of Medicine". Archived from the original on 2012-03-21.
  8. ^ "Tinsley Randolph Harrison - The founding editor of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine". Archived from the original on 2018-04-09. Retrieved 2014-10-14.
  9. ^ "Lens :: A New Way of Looking at Science -- Eugene Braunwald: Maestro Of American Cardiology". Archived from the original on 2019-03-30. Retrieved 2014-10-14.
  10. PMID 18507496
    .
  11. .
  12. .

Further reading