st be bound in volumes and they require a
great amount of shelf-room; all this, in addition to the cost of
subscription for those which are not furnished us gratuitously.

It is true that the value of old scientific periodicals is, other things
being equal, in the inverse ratio of their age, for the obvious reason
that what is most valuable in the earlier volumes of a series is drained
off into the standard works with which the intelligent practitioner is
supposed to be familiar. But no extended record of facts grows too old
to be useful, provided only that we have a ready and sure way of getting
at the particular fact or facts we are in search of.

And this leads me to speak of what I conceive to be one of the principal
tasks to be performed by the present and the coming generation of
scholars, not only in the medical, but in every department of knowledge.
I mean the formation of indexes, and more especially of indexes to
periodical literature.

This idea has long been working in the minds of scholars, and all who
have had occasion to follow out any special subject. I have a right to
speak of it, for I long ago attempted to supply the want of indexes in
some small measure for my own need. I had a very complete set of the
"American Journal of the Medical Sciences;" an entire set of the "North
American Review," and many volumes of the reprints of the three leading
British quarterlies. Of what use were they to me without general
indexes? I looked them all through carefully and made classified lists
of all the articles I thought I should most care to read. But they soon
outgrew my lists. The "North American Review" kept filling up shelf
after shelf, rich in articles which I often wanted to consult, but what a
labor to find them, until the index of Mr. Gushing, published a few
months since, made the contents of these hundred and twenty volumes as
easily accessible as the words in a dictionary! I had a, copy of good
Dr. Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia, a treasure-house to my boyhood which has
not lost its value for me in later years. But where to look for what I
wanted? I wished to know, for instance, what Dr. Burney had to say about
singing. Who would have looked for it under the Italian word cantare? I
was curious to learn something of the etchings of Rembrandt, and where
should I find it but under the head "Low Countries, Engravers of
the,"--an elaborate and most valuable article of a hundred
double-columned close-printed qu