Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Report on the Causes Which Impede the Progress of American Medical Literature
Intimately associated with this branch of the subject is another, hardly of less importance than that just discussed. I allude to the editing of British works by American physicians. So common is this practice that it now amounts to a trade. Pursued by young men and old men, men without reputation and men with reputation, it has become a crying evil, an evil which is directly instrumental in fostering and protecting British in?uence to the detriment of American authors. The main object of this practice generally is not to enhance the value of the reprint, but to promote its circula tion by imparting to it somewhat of an American air. The book is indorsed, and it accordingly goes before the profession under a new prestige. The name of the editor is supposed to be a guaran tee for its excellence; it serves the same purpose to the work that a letter of introduction serves to a traveller. It secures it notice perhaps a cup of tea, and a permanent home. In this manner it often happens that works, destitute of real merit, or which fall still born from the British press, meet with a wide and rapid circulation in the United States, to the injury of deserving native authors, and the detriment of our medical literature. For fifty, a hundred, or two hundred dollars, men may be found, in almost every portion of the land, ready and willing to lend their aid and support to what the English press so constantly denounces and stigmatizes as lite rary piracies. What is remarkable, is that this kind of labor is often much more remunerative than the authorship of original works, which, as is well known to those engaged in it, is seldom adequately rewarded on this side of the Atlantic.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
