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Are important historical records
EDITOR,--When the first of the BBC's foreign correspondents outraged his "director of the spoken word" he was relegated to the "BBC equivalent of the salt-mines." What was that? It was the preparation of obituaries.1 I have sympathy with the BMJ's dilemma over what to do about obituaries,2 but they are vital historical records. True, the medical profesion has the compulsory Medical Register and the voluntary Medical Directory. But the obituary is needed as a record of changes in the professional and extraprofessional activities of doctors.
With the support of a grant from the Wellcome Trust I am compiling a database of posthumous references and obituaries of medical practitioners 1750-1850. I will have found obituaries or something similar for around 10000 practitioners, using contemporary medical journals (over 200 titles) and other sources, principally the Gentleman's Magazine. The obituaries before 1850 followed their own, different conventions. Endless practitioners were extolled for their
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