Andrew MacFarlane, M. D., Al- | Frederick W. Smith, M. D., Syra

Clement F. Theisen, M. D., Albany,
N. Y.

W. H. Thomson, M. D., New York
City.

Al-Alvah H. Traver, M. D., Albany,
N. Y.

Twenty-fifth Year- Jubilee Number

ALBANY

MEDICAL ANNALS

Original Communications

THE MEDICAL ANNALS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.

BY FREDERIC C. CURTIS, M. D.,

Professor of Dermatology, Albany Medical College.

AND

WILLIS G. TUCKER, M. D.,

Registrar and Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology, Albany Medical College. The first issue of the ANNALS, as we familiarly call our medical periodical whose quarter centenary we celebrate with this issue, bears the date of February, 1880. It came into being in our minds sometime before that, and took definite shape one July day of the year before, in the course of a long ride which one of us took with Dr. Vander Veer out across the Helderbergs. That was its inception.

It grew out of its antecedents, after a plan unique in journalism. In 1864 there issued from the press of Joel Munsell, a name identified with the printed history of early Albany, a volume entitled "Annals of the Medical Society of the County of Albany." The title was no doubt suggested by the publisher, who had used it in connection with the numerous works of historic material which he had produced. This volume contained in 400 pages a record of the first half century of the proceedings of the Society from its incorporation in 1806, together with biographical sketches of nearly one hundred deceased members, written for the most part by its editor and author, Dr. Sylvester D. Willard. We cannot put too high honor on this historian of our local profession, a contributor likewise to much else that was good, who, laying out for the sphere of his work the past rather than the

present, by arduous research placed in form for permanent preservation the annals of our old Society during its early years and of the men who constituted the medical profession prior to 1850. It is fitting that now when our Society is on the eve of its centennial it should pay a tribute to its conspicuous annalist and to the men who made its early history, many of them eminently worthy of emulation for their devotion to all that is best in our profession. And the day of small things, small as compared with present day accomplishments, should not be forgotten in a historic sketch which likewise deals with the genesis of our journal, in which at the close of its twenty-fifth year we of Albany county have reason to entertain sentiments of satisfaction.

The title page of Dr. Willard's book has these lines from the Iliad:

"A wise Physician skilled our wounds to heal,
Is more than armies to the public weal."

Some were among the number who filled our places during the first half of the century whose names are well known in medical science, while many of them filled important places in this community; and we are under lasting obligation to one who has relieved us of the painful thought of allowing to go into forgetfulness those who passed long and useful lives in a worthy profession before us on the stage.

In 1872 a volume of 500 pages, similar in scope, covering the period from 1850 to 1870, was published by the Society under the editorship of Drs. James S. Bailey and Charles H. Porter, both of whom have passed away, the latter just recently; which brings us to the periodical whose name came very naturally to be that of its earliest progenitor, "The Medical Annals, a Journal of the Medical Society of the County of Albany."

The first issue of the ANNALS contains the record of its formal beginning, in this resolution adopted at a meeting of the Society held November, 1879:

Resolved, That a committee of five be appointed to investigate into the feasibility of publishing the old minutes of the Society, beginning with 1870, in periodical installments, adding to it the current minutes of the Society paged separately, together with such items of interest as may appear advisable.

This action having been taken, the following committee was appointed and they subsequently became and for years continued to be the editors and committee of publication: Drs. F. C. Curtis,

A. Vander Veer, J. B. Stonehouse, Lorenzo Hale and J. D. Featherstonhaugh.

So far as we know the plan and purpose of this periodical, as begun and for a few years prosecuted, was unique. It was a Society journal, which was to carry in each issue signatures of a volume of Transactions covering ten years past, and with this other parts to be made up of current matter of local interest, the Society proceedings and papers, comment on local matters, hospital notes and legislative reports. In later years the ANNALS became more distinctly a college journal, but from its first issue the fact that Albany is conspicuously a medical college centre was taken. account of and no subsequent issue failed to contain "alumni notes." Its prospectus referred to this and subscribers were at once on our mailing list from graduates of the college remote from this locality. The first number contained an advertisement page of the college thereafter carried regularly, and likewise of the Albany, St. Peter's and Child's Hospitals. Our advertising pages were models of uncriticizable correctness, being made up wholly from local business concerns and enterprises. During the first year it appeared modestly but once in two months; since it has been a monthly.

It was beyond our thought to make it at the outset more than a local journal, under the patronage of a County Medical Society contesting that of Erie County for third place in point of membership in the State; but in the prospectus and the prefatory editorial reference was made not only to the place a local journal might fill, and the claim for Albany with its considerable surrounding population and medical interests as the place for one, but also to the fact that outside of New York City there was no medical journal save in remote Buffalo nor in New England nearer than Boston, and the patronage of the physicians of this region was solicited with a promise to care for all its medical interests. Reference was soon made to the assurance of financial success and the interest especially of the alumni of the medical college.

The writers of this sketch would find much pleasure, turning over the pages of the first three years of the ANNALS, bound as we have them, advertising pages and covers, in one large tome, in bringing out many interesting historic facts that catch the eye regarding men and measures of twenty-five years ago which we are sure would make pleasant reading if space permitted, which it will not.

A few definite things gave it origin and one of the chief was to print in installments the proceedings of the Society from 1870 to 1880. In three years this was accomplished, and volume III of the "Transactions of the Medical Society of the County of Albany," was completed. The volume contains between 400 and 500 pages, made even with considerable condensation from ten years of the Society work and records; and equal in size to its predecessors, which between them covered sixty-five years. They were among the most active, strenuous years of the Society's existence, as those who lived in them well remember. The profession of this city in the early half of that decade was passing through a period of somewhat earnest struggle, chiefly regarding the conduct of the affairs of the medical college, and there was a partisanship in which few failed to have a concern. This does not appear conspicuously in the published record, but it contributed to full meetings and worthy material which is of historic value in the growth of medical science. Food is more savory for a modıcum of spice, and the outcome was beneficent for all concerned.

To preserve the identity of a volume constructed in this fashion on an installment plan, there were secured for it portraits of a dozen or more conspicuous members of the Society, mostly deceased, which were offered and added to the book as the files composing it were sent by subscribers for binding, in a cover uniform with preceding volumes. It thus contains admirable portraits of Drs. Thomas and Edward Hun, the two McNaughtons, the elder Boyd, March, Quackenbush, Vanderpoel, Robertson, Armsby, the elder Bigelow, "preserving in their appropriate place the faces of men of mark in our profession." Sixty-five sketches of deceased members, the collection of the matter for which extended over three years and including note of every one not previously accounted for, with a chronological register of all members of the Society, are included in the volume, effecting a record which is a credit to the Society as the early work of the MEDICAL ANNALS, and of which the early editors have a conscious pride. Besides this, 500 pages of current matter for the three years were printed, with some contributed material from outside this channel.

The ANNALS, having accomplished its primary mission, was not given up, but continued as a journal of the Society for five years longer, enlarging its field and scope to some extent as a local journal. Then, in 1888, the Albany Medical Library and Journal Association was formed, and it passed into their hands with little