ABSTRACT
For 150 years, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has circulated all over the world. Yet the BMJ and the predecessor Association and Provincial Medical Journal’s were based explicitly and institutionally in the medical culture of a geographic area. Using any single national culture as a gauge naturally brings its own hazards, and the culture of the United States is no exception. That the BMJ was consistently one of the major medical periodicals of the world can be easily established. Since the 1930s, at least, those recommending journals for medical libraries, those compiling standard indexes, and those doing citation studies all agreed: the BMJ was a conspicuous and even essential medical journal. Beyond the citation counts, there are two other obvious kinds of evidence suggesting the impact of a journal, namely, circulation figures and impressions of knowledgeable people of the past.
