There are hundreds of university library catalogues available over the internet, some are available for subject searching. Two catalogues of extraordinary value are the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Library of Congress (LC). The NLM is the largest medical library in the world and it's History of Medicine Division has a subordinate home page providing further resources. "Locator" is a library catalogue, it does not list the contents of serials and periodicals. To find journal articles and other subordinate information other resources are necessary. In medicine the most common computer based system is NLM's MEDLARS established in 1964. MEDLINE (MEDLARS on line) is now available without charge at the NLM home page and is the most commonly used search tool for medical literature.



For history MEDLINE is limited by its origins -- MEDLINE DOES NOT CONTAIN REFERENCES TO LITERATURE PUBLISHED PRIOR TO 1964! A MEDLINE search therefore is a very limited search. There are projects to put older medical literature into online searchable formats but at the present time you must use printed bibliographies to search for literature prior to 1964. HISTLINE (History of Medicine on line) is available without charge from the NLM History of Medicine Division Home Page. HISTLINE is the history of medicine subset of MEDLINE. It has been supplemented with references to historical literature which do not occur in the MEDLINE database. HISTLINE is the best available source for finding secondary literature in the history of medicine. However, HISTLINE only contains material published in 1970 or later, you can not find older historical literature through HISTLINE but most use printed bibliographies.

Applications may be submitted in various categories to be determined. Each category has seven author classifications: family physicians and fellows primarily in academic medicine, family physicians primarily in clinical practice, family practice residents, medical students, international attendees, professionals primarily engaged in medical informatics and others.

Estimates suggest that almost half of all articles published in journals are by ghostwriters. While doctors who have put their names to the papers can be paid handsomely for 'lending' their reputations, the ghostwriters remain hidden. They, and the involvement of the pharmaceutical firms, are rarely revealed.

An article published last February in the Journal of Alimentary Pharmacology , which specialises in stomach disorders, involved a medical writer working for drug giant AstraZeneca - a fact that was not revealed by the author.

In February the New England Journal of Medicine was forced to retract an article published last year by doctors from Imperial College in London and the National Heart Institute on treating a type of heart problem. It emerged that several of the listed authors had little or nothing to do with the research. The deception was revealed only when German cardiologist Dr Hubert Seggewiss, one of the eight listed authors, called the editor of the journal to say he had never seen any version of the paper.