An invitation from the editor of the British Medical Journal to tell, in its pages, something of the history of the New England Journal of Medicine, on the occasion of its hundred and fiftieth anniversary, was a pleasant surprise. Coming at about the time of our American Thanksgiving, it was accepted in that spirit by one who, as a confirmed amateur, has been associated in one capacity or another with the New England Journal of Medicine for many years. An amateur standing, however, has long been a sporting proposition among those of British descent, and the New England Journal may be considered as having a heritage of British standards and traditions. John Collins Warren and James Jackson, two able and energetic young Boston physicians, were the original founders of the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and the Collateral Branches of Science (Conducted by a Number of Physicians), the first quarterly issue of which appeared in January, 1812. Warren, born in 1778, was the eldest son of John Warren, proposer in 1782 of a Medical Faculty at Harvard University, and its first professor, as well as a founder in the previous year of the Massachusetts Medical Society; John was a younger brother of another physician, General Joseph Warren, who lost his life at the Battle of Bunker Hill. James Jackson, a native of Newburyport, Massachusetts, was a graduate of Harvard College a year before his friend, Warren, and was Warren's senior by a year. He-studied medicine at Harvard Medical School and as an apprentice to Edward Holyoke, of Salem.; Warren pursued his medical studies less formally and at first less seriously. They both travelled to England in 1799 and served as dressers under Astley Cooper at Guy's Hospital. Jackson returned to Boston in 1800 and entered practice; Warren earned his medical degree at Edinburgh, studied for a year in Paris, and sailed for home in 1802. Warren and Jackson not only established the Journal. Between them they founded the Massachusetts General Hospital and obtained its charter in 1811, although its cornerstone was not laid until 1818. It was then built, according to the specifications of its trustees, " of stone and of that kind called granite," this material, through the kindness of the Massachusetts legislature, being "hammered and fitted for use" by the convicts at Charlestown. As team mates the two friends made a going concern of the Massachusetts Medical Society, today the oldest of the state societies in continuous existence, and each served as its president; they prepared for the Society the first Massachusetts Pharmacopoeia; they became, respectively, Professor of Anatomy and Surgery and Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physick at the Medical School.
