| The Beginnings In
September 1951, the first issue of the West Indian Medical Journal
was published. Its immediate predecessor was the Jamaica Medical
Review which came into being through the hard work and dedication
of a group of prominent local surgeons and physicians. Their stated
primary aim was "the encouragement of the medical profession
in the British West Indies to record individual experiences and
researches considered of value no less to their colleagues in the
Caribbean and elsewhere than to themselves for subsequent reference".
Beginning in 1948, a section of the Review had
been reserved to provide information about the fledgling University
College of the West Indies (UCWI) and two years later, to encourage
the establishment of a regional journal of medical sciences, the
Editorial Board offered the assets and goodwill of the Review to
the College. This was accepted and a joint committee drawn from
the Medical Faculty and local physicians was formed to facilitate
the transfer.
During a discussion on this proposal at a meeting
of the UCWI Senate in October 1950, the suggestion by Mr H Holdsworth,
the College Librarian that the new publication be named the West
Indian Medical Journal was accepted. Later in the year, the UCWI
Council accepted the recommendation of Senate for the West Indian
Medical Journal to be published with an Editorial Committee of six
persons. The Jamaican representative of the British Medical Association
was included in the Committee. Full authority for the Journal was
vested in the Editorial Board which was in turn to be answerable
directly to the UCWI Council.
The aim of the Editorial Board was "to publish
original articles and also reviews of a high scientific standard
with particular reference to medicine in the British West Indies"
so that it would become "a reference journal of diseases of
the West Indies for the medical world as a whole". Professor
Cruickshank offered office space for the Journal in the Department
of Medicine and there it remained for the next 24 years.
The first issue of the Journal was published in
September 1951 with 13 contributors, seven of whom were doctors
in the Jamaican Government Medical Service or in private practice
locally, the others being from the College. The selection of articles
for this issue was eclectic. There was the story of how Dr John
Morgan came to Jamaica in 1772 to collect funds to help establish
the first American medical school in Philadelphia, now the University
of Pennsylvania; a research paper on enzyme activity in the liver,
an account of an unusual liver disease in Jamaican children and
a review article on kwashiorkor.
The first volume of the Journal consisted of three
issues, the other two being published in March and October 1952.
Beginning the following year, each volume consisted of four issues,
published quarterly.
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