Millennial musings

doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7269.1092

BMJ 2000;321:1092-1093 ( 4 November )

Editorials

Millennial musings

Are almost certainly bound to be wrong

Clinical review p 1117
Education and debate pp 1124-54
This week's BMJ is publishing several papers selected from next week's keynote conference of the Millennium Festival of Medicine. The conference will run from Monday 6 November to Friday 10 November at the QEII Conference Centre in London. Some tickets are still available. Those interested should contact the BMA conference unit on 020 7383 6605 or confunit@bma.org.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Historians, A J P Taylor once said, make rotten prophets, and I don't suppose that historians of medicine like myself areany exception. All I can see ahead are banana skins. But it'snot clear that doctors are any better when it comes to crystalball gazing. Little over 130 years ago, for example, the distinguishedsurgeon Sir John Erichsen, of University College Hospital, proclaimedthat "the abdomen, the chest and the brain [will] be for evershut from the intrusion of the wise and humanesurgeon."

More hopefully, back in 1936, Sir Crisp English informed readers of the BMJ that within 20 years "it will be common practicefor you to visit patients by aeroplane." "Telephones with televisionwill be in regular practical use," he predicted: "The doctor willsee on the television screen the tongues and tonsils of his patients. . . he will also see his guineas, but will be unable to . . . [Full text of this article]

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