ABSTRACT
The quantity of medical material in general scientific journals diminished during the eighteenth century. The Medical Museum, claiming on its title page to be ‘a repository of cases, experiments, researches and discoveries, collected at home and abroad’, came out monthly in two annual volumes, and reached a third volume before going under in 1764. A quite extensive medical press was operating by 1800 – over thirty titles had come and gone; and if few journals achieved any longevity before collapsing, or being renamed, new ones were always plugging the gaps. However halting and uneven, the development of medical journalism in an Enlightenment age pre-occupied with questions of knowledge, truth and power may be seen as a response to these challenges. The editors of the Medical and Physical Journal complained that they received articles on ‘controversial subjects’ signed only with initials, and hence impossible to print.
