o parody Mr. Webster's
words in speaking of Hamilton, to describe what Mr. Gushing did for the
solemn rows of back volumes of our honored old Review which had been
long fossilizing on our shelves: "He touched the dead corpse of the
'North American,' and it sprang to its feet." A library of the best
thought of the best American scholars during the greater portion of the
century was brought to light by the work of the indexmaker as truly as
were the Assyrian tablets by the labors of Layard.

A great portion of the best writing and reading literary, scientific,
professional, miscellaneous--comes to us now, at stated intervals, in
paper covers. The writer appears, as it were, in his shirt-sleeves. As
soon as he has delivered his message the book-binder puts a coat on
his back, and he joins the forlorn brotherhood of "back volumes," than
which, so long as they are unindexed, nothing can be more exasperating.
Who wants a lock without a key, a ship without a rudder, a binnacle
without a compass, a check without a signature, a greenback without a
goldback behind it?

I have referred chiefly to the medical journals, but I would include
with these the reports of medical associations, and those separate
publications which, coming in the form of pamphlets, heap themselves
into chaotic piles and bundles which are worse than useless, taking up a
great deal of room, and frightening everything away but mice and mousing
antiquarians, or possibly at long intervals some terebrating specialist.

Arranged, bound, indexed, all these at once become accessible and
valuable. I will take the first instance which happens to suggest
itself. How many who know all about osteoblasts and the experiments of
Ollier, and all that has grown out of them, know where to go for a paper
by the late Dr. A. L. Peirson of Salem, published in the year 1840,
under the modest title, Remarks on Fractures? And if any practitioner
who has to deal with broken bones does not know that most excellent
and practical essay, it is a great pity, for it answers very numerous
questions which will be sure to suggest themselves to the surgeon and
the patient as no one of the recent treatises, on my own shelves, at
least, can do.

But if indexing is the special need of our time in medical literature,
as in every department of knowledge, it must be remembered that it
is not only an immense labor, but one that never ends. It requires,
therefore, the cooperation of a large number