Tropical Medicine and International Health: A European Journal

Edited by:
  • D. J. Bradley
Blackwell Science. 12/yr.North America $690.50, Europe £378, elsewhere £416 (institutional); North America $99.50, Europe £55, elsewhere £60 (personal)
Credit: MARK DOBSON

When Patrick Manson published his Tropical Diseases in 1898, there was no question what constituted a tropical disease: when an Englishman got malaria in the Fens of East Anglia it was an English disease; when an African got malaria it was a tropical disease. With the demise of colonialism, ‘tropical medicine’ became something of a pejorative.

However, to suggest that the diseases of tropical peoples were really nothing more geographically exclusive than the common cold would not be biologically or epidemiologically correct, and, bereft of the drama of the term, would not be attractive to international funders of health projects in the developing world. Modifiers such as ‘international health’, ‘geographic medicine’ and ‘travel medicine’ have come into fashion, although it is difficult to discern the difference they represent from Manson's Tropical Diseases and the discipline of tropical medicine.

And so to Tropical Medicine and International Health: A European Journal. Actually, this is not a brand new journal but a meld of three old journals: the Annales de la Société Belge de Médecine, Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and Tropical and Geographical Medicine (which itself incorporated Acta Leidensia and Tropical Medicine and Parasitology). Those who wish the discipline of tropical medicine to prosper will have difficulty in deciding whether to rejoice at the founding of a new journal or mourn the loss of three well-established journals.

Each of the old journals had something of a distinct character; they were all good but not great journals. Clinicians, clinical researchers and laboratory scientists would send their good, but not their best, stuff to them. This is in no way to demean those journals, whose contents were very often more meaningful for the understanding, control and management of tropical diseases than the more rarefied papers in the journals considered more exalted in the publication hierarchy.

In reviewing the four issues from December 1996 to March 1997, one gets the impression that the amalgam that is Tropical Medicine and International Health has assumed, gestalt-like, the character of its components. Most of the papers are related to the diseases and health problems of sub-Saharan Africa. The papers are mostly on clinical topics, with or without a laboratory element, and public health studies on sanitation, policy and education.

There are very few (I counted only two) papers that report pure, laboratory-based, experimental research. Each issue begins with an editorial on an important aspect of tropical health, although none shows fire-in-the-belly fierce advocacy.

If I were a member of my institution's or department's library committee, I would certainly recommend subscription to the journal and would personally look forward to reading each new issue. Besides, three for the price of one is a bargain.