Abstract
THE reference to the income and expenditure of the British Medical Association last week requires correction. The income of the association, from subscription, is not 5,000l but 3,471l.; the subscription annually only one guinea. The association is one which includes an important political and social organisation. For the annual guinea the associates are enabled not only to supply themselves with a journal weekly, which stands on the same footing as those published at a higher price than their total annual subscription, but in addition they keep also an active and important organisation, with branches in every part of the kingdom, which protects medical and public interests and advances medical science. Many think with you that it would be desirable to make larger grants for special researches. But for this purpose it would be necessary to start a special fund. The annual mass of scientific matter published in the journal is treble what could be contained in any volume of Transactions, and has the advantage of being published at the opportune moments of discussion. You would confer a benefit by urging the propriety of a special fund for original research. But the members are so well pleased with the large return for their annual guinea, that their numbers have risen in four years from two to four thousand; and the weekly journal, which now takes the lead in periodical medical literature, is the essential condition of the political and professional authority of the association. To publish in its place an annual volume of Transactions would, it is universally felt, be a suicidal act of retrogression. Among the 4,000 members there are not a dozen who are not aware of this.
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X The British Medical Association. Nature 2, 353 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/002353c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/002353c0
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