by
Nancy Ryerson, Staff Writer | January 01, 2013
From the January 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The journal went on to report on other remarkable medical firsts. It published a lecture in 1872 by a neurologist who described the then-unknown idea that one side of the brain could influence both sides of the body. The first full description of a spinal-disk rupture appeared in 1934. The first successes of early childhood leukemia treatment, using a folic acid antagonist, were described in 1948. In 1952, the journal published an early report on the resuscitation of the heart. It continued publishing groundbreaking articles into more recent times, providing in 1981 some of the first accounts of what would later be known as AIDS. In 2001, the journal published some of the first breakthroughs in chronic leukemia, and in 2004 described advances in the treatment of lung cancer.
Today, more than 600,000 people in 177 countries read the journal each week. It is the most cited medical journal in scientific literature. Free online access is generally available six months after an article is published, though articles are available immediately upon publishing in 100 low-income countries. In addition to access to the full New England Journal of Medicine archive launched on NEJM.org in 2010, the website also published a retrospective for its 200th anniversary in 2012. Taking a look back at the New England Journal of Medicine provides an interesting glimpse into the history of health care and health research in the United States. The journal published several articles offering snapshots of treatments from different moments in the last two centuries, such as “200 years of diabetes” and “Two centuries of neurology and psychiatry in the NEJM.” Other articles examine the health care system throughout the ages, with perspectives like “The Evolving Primary Care Physician” and “A Century of Health Care Reform in the U.S.”
In addition to its website, the NEJM offers two podcasts to accompany each issue, one featuring interviews with study authors and another summarizing the articles in the issue. Without a doubt, from its humble beginnings struggling amongst scores of competing journals to its influential present, the NEJM has made itself as the go-to journal for medical breakthroughs for the last two centuries.
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