The American Journal of Physiology

I suppose that almost every worker in our science has given some thought to the general progress of physiology and to the problems raised by its growth, and I cannot doubt that some have pondered deeply Over these problems and have much more insight into them than I possess, but you must admit that on the whole the thoughts have been kept private, and nobody seems to have considered it worth while to bring the matter up for a general discussion among physiologists. When I venture to do so it is because I feel deeply the importance of the subject, and in spite of the fact that I feel even more deeply my own lack of competence in all questions involving organization. My aim is only to draw your attention to some of the problems in the hope that means may be found to solve them. We are all aware that physiology is a rapidly expanding science in the sense that an ever increasing amount of work is being produced by an increasing number of workers, and the increase in attendance at the international congresses bears witness to the fact. I have tried to count from the abstracting and indexing journals the number of papers published on physiological subjects. The figures are probably not strictly comparable, but their general tendency is unmistakable. In the first year of this century, the year of the Congress in Turin, titles were given in the Physiologisches Zentralblatt of 3800 papers, and during the first decade only minor fluctuations took place. I find from the Zentralblatt andBibliographia 3900 in 1904 (Congress in Brussels), 3500 in 1907 (Heidelberg) and 4300 in 1910 (Vienna), but then a rapid increase took place and in 1912 the figure was 6700. I have no reliable statistics for the years from 1913-1919, but for 1920 the Jahresbericht gives the titles of 11,500 papers; for 1923 (Edinburgh) the figure is 14,000 and for 1926 (Stockholm) it reached 18,000, and there is no doubt that it is increasing further. I had the impression that physiological papers now were on an average shorter than 25 years ago, but a sample counting failed to substantiate this im243