Scientific language trends among Swedish urologists and surgeons 1900-1955

Before English took the lead as the prime scientific language among northern European urologists and surgeons, German was widely regarded as the "lingua franca". This shift has to date not been systematically reconstructed. This article provides insights into the question how political and social factors influence how physicians communicate with each other, what they read, and how the constellations of international scientific communities in medicine change over time.

Through a language analysis of more than 2000 articles, including their references, in major Swedish medical journals as well as surgical doctoral dissertations defended at Swedish universities, this paper explores scientific language trends during the first half of the twentieth century among Swedish physicians for the first time on a large scale.

The study shows that Swedish urologists and surgeons generally did not switch to English during the years immediately after the First World War, as has been documented in other countries. After a decrease during the first 10 years after the First World War, the German language dominated among Swedish urologists and surgeons from the 1930s until the early 1940s, when English first dominated at large. The rapidity of this process shows that almost all surgical researchers had changed from German to English within just a few years.