The British Medical Bulletin 1943-1993. A guide to medical science and thought in Britain

Established 50 years ago by The British Council, to promote medical science abroad, the British Medical Bulletin (BMB) has evolved from a stencilled list of abstracts into a distinguished medical periodical. It has reflected the extraordinary diversity of advances that have been made in medicine in this country. During these 5 decades anti-microbial chemotherapy has become firmly established; organ and tissue transplantation have become a reality; the significance of Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA has been realised by the increasing applications of molecular biology to human disease; and modern investigative techniques, particularly magnetic resonance imaging, have made the human body virtually transparent. At the same time the BMB has mirrored fresh concerns, with, for example, industrial and environmental hazards, with newly recognised infectious agents, and increasingly with the medico-social problems of the modern era. This paper reviews the scientific contributions of the Bulletin and some of the administrative and financial structures that have supported it.