§ 8 The Oxford Medical Publications
In the year 1907 a Joint Committee was formed between the Oxford University Press and Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, under the Directorship of Mr. Humphrey Sumner Milford and Sir Ernest Hodder Williams, which had for its object the production of Medical, Surgical, and Scientific books, under the general title of the ‘Oxford Medical Publications’.
The Committee were peculiarly fortunate in having the invaluable advice and assistance, in the choice of Authors and Subjects, of the late Sir William Osler, Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford, and a Delegate of the Press.
The key-note of the Oxford Medical Publications has always been the practical character of the treatment. The popular Medical Manuals, Monographs, and the ‘General Practitioner Series’ have now a world-wide reputation, and include a large number of standard works, such as Diseases of the Heart, and Principles of Diagnosis and Treatment in Heart Affections by Sir James Mackenzie, A System of Operative Surgery by F. F. Burghard, C.B., Common Disorders and Diseases of Childhood by G. F. Still, Practical Obstetrics by Professor E. Hastings Tweedy, Guide to Gynaecology in General Practice by Comyns Berkeley and Victor Bonney, The Practitioner’s Encyclopaedia of Medical Treatment, The Practitioner’s Encyclopaedia of Medicine and Surgery.
By the acquisition in 1908 of Mr. Young J. Pentland’s business, leading Text-books by the most eminent Scottish authors were incorporated, including such well-known books as Cunningham’s Text-book of Anatomy and Manual of Practical Anatomy, Muir and Ritchie’s Manual of Bacteriology, Thomson and Miles’s Manual of Surgery, Waring’s Manual of Operative Surgery, Thomson’s Outlines of Zoology.
The Oxford Medical Publications were awarded the Grand Prix at the seventeenth International Congress of Medicine held in London in 1913. This award was bestowed for the general excellence of the Students’ books produced in the Series, and for the production of new and original work therein.
In 1916 the Committee sustained a great loss in the death of their Editor, James Keogh Murphy. A further heavy loss was sustained at the end of 1919 by the death of Sir William Osler, whose advice and assistance had always been of inestimable value. After the death of Mr. Murphy, the Editorship was temporarily undertaken by Lieut.-Colonel Sir D’Arcy Power, who was responsible for several important additions to the Series, including the well-known Oxford War Primers of Medicine and Surgery. Towards the close of hostilities Captain Robert McNair Wilson, M.B., Ch.B., late Assistant to Sir James Mackenzie under the Medical Research Committee, became Editor, and under his direction further important additions have been made, including Menders of the Maimed by Professor Arthur Keith, Studies in Neurology by Henry Head, Operative Treatment of Chronic Intestinal Stasis by Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane, Diagnosis and Treatment of Venereal Diseases in General Practice by Brevet-Colonel L. W. Harrison, D.S.O., Plastic Surgery of the Face by Major H. D. Gillies, C.B.E., R.A.M.C., War Neuroses and Shell Shock by Sir Frederick Mott, K.B.E., Trench Fever by Lieut.-Colonel W. Byam, O.B.E., Clinical Ophthalmology for the General Practitioner by A. Maitland Ramsay, and Tropical Ophthalmology by Lieut.-Colonel R. H. Elliot, I.M.S. The present Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, Sir Archibald Garrod, is a Delegate of the Press and an Oxford author.
The Oxford Catalogue now devotes many pages to the medical list, and the American Branch, by the publication of the encyclopaedic ‘loose-leaf’ Oxford Surgery, has produced an important and valuable adaptation of a British original. In the Quarterly Journal of Medicine the University possesses one of the most valuable scientific journals in the world; and in the other medical publications it administers what is at once a valuable property and a powerful instrument of education. Oxford medical books are known wherever English is spoken.