The year 2023 celebrates the 200th anniversary of The Lancet, a significant achievement for the publication. The first issue of the new year includes an editorial that both reflects on the past and emphasizes important commitments for the publication in the future. We have included a portion of the editorial below.

Thomas Wakley, a 27-year-old apothecary, surgeon, and sometime boxer, founded The Lancet in 1823. Wakley’s intention was to publish reports of metropolitan hospital lectures, at the time a highly profitable activity for a small group of powerful physicians and surgeons in London. In addition to dismantling this private monopoly over medical knowledge, Wakley also hoped to provide “a correct description” of important clinical cases “a complete Chronicle of the current Literature”. His audience was national (city and country doctors) and global (“Colonial Practitioners”—a group for whom we must make our own accounting). But Wakley’s Lancet was not only a journal. It was also an idea. Wakley understood that he would face “interested opposition”, and so he saw The Lancet as an instrument (hence the journal’s unusual name) to cut out the corruption in medicine.

Medicine may seem very different in the 21st century. But the inequities of 19th century medical practice remain just as profound imbalances in power, inequalities in resources, and disparities in access to high-quality health care. And so Wakley’s idea—that The Lancet should somehow be more than a scientific journal of record—remains an animating spirit for us today. We believe that the academic medical community is a vastly neglected contributor to social progress. We believe that through extraordinary partnerships, the science we publish can be used as an instrument to accelerate action to advance health and health equity. We believe that medicine and medical research are political as well as scientific activities.

Read the full editorial here.

References

  1. L. (2023). The Lancet at 200: a start, but more to do. The Lancet, 401(10370), 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(22)02586-7

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