Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office US Army

Abstract

IT is a great pleasure to all who are interested in any form of library or literature to observe how punctually, year by year, these magnificent volumes appear, and show in a very practical way how American enterprise can deal with old-world questions of gathering together and keeping up a collection of books that is superior in its own department to any other, and which has been got together in little more than thirty years. What is framed as an Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office at Washington constitutes in effect a dictionary of all medical and surgical literature, ancient and modern, with very few lacunæ; the entries under authors' headings have now reached 240,007, and under subject-headings 539,927; and the attempt which at first sight may well have seemed too ambitious—viz. to catalogue under subject-headings all the signed articles which touch on medicine which exist in the periodical publications of all languages, as well as to cross catalogue all medical books and pamphlets of the world under both author and subject-headings—has turned out perfectly successful. In the first eleven volumes there were mentioned 3,929 periodical publications which were thus treated; in the two more volumes which are before us there are 341 additions, and though some of the older ones may have died out, yet the labour remaining is obviously no light one. The thirteenth volume brings us within sight of the end, and it is probable that two years more may finish the first edition of the catalogue; yet it cannot but be that some provision, by supplement or otherwise, must be made for the literature which during fifteen years has been accumulating under the headings of the earlier volumes, and some arrangement must be made for the literature of the future. From the monthly issues of the Index Medicus, which is a catalogue issued by Mr. Billings, on similar lines, of purely contemporary medical literature, we may estimate that the sum total of titles of additions to the world's medical literature would amount to about one such volume as the present every three years, which leaves us no doubt that the successors to Mr. Billings, the present librarian, will have occasion for all the indomitable activity and accuracy he has shown. In the twelfth volume, considerable use in various quarters has enabled us to find only one trifling misprint of a well-known physician's initials (xii. 449), but accuracy in such details is indispensable when we have to do with 136 authors of the name of Richter, 227 of the name of Smith, and 240 of the name of Schmidt. The student may be overwhelmed at first by the 39 imperial 8vo. pages that are required for a closely-printed catalogue of the titles of the literature of scarlet fever, but he will find that 46 pages are needed for rheumatism, 63 for small-pox, and 102 for surgery. Under these large headings the sub-indexing is excellent. The great importance of such a classification under subject-headings should never be lost sight of in a catalogue which deals mainly with matters of observation and natural science, for, in a large majority of cases, the importance of the record depends more on the observation than on the observer, and the student for whom all these volumes are such an invaluable help to knowledge is much more likely to be wishing to pursue an inquiry on a particular subject, regardless of those who wrote on it, than to trace out the works of a particular author regardless of what he wrote upon. However, Mr. Billings is extremely liberal to him, and gives him an excellent chance of doing both, of seeing all the vast mass of signed periodical literature as well as the books written on the particular subject, and also of seeing a list of all that each author has written with the exception of the articles in periodical literature that he has not republished, and he will find that many authors have republished in pamphlet form all that is worth reading.

Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office U.S. Army.

Vol. xii. (Reger—Shuttleworth), pp. 1004, 1892, and vol. xiii. (Sialogogues—Sutugin), pp. 1005. Imp. 8vo. Washington, (Government Printing Office, 1893.)