The Weight of Medical Knowledge

MOST of us feel weighed down by the heavy and increasing burden of medical reading. Our inevitable failure in the struggle "to keep up with the literature" often generates anxiety and guilt. We are all aware that the situation has worsened in the past few years, and that no respite can be expected in the future. Since it is advisable to "know thy enemy," it seemed appropriate to take some objective measure of the amount of literature generated by medical scientists. The ubiquitous and familiar Index Medicus was chosen as a suitable indicator of the magnitude of the increase in . . .