Medical literature

Medical literature is the scientific literature of medicine: articles in journals and texts in books devoted to the field of medicine. Many references to the medical literature include the health care literature generally, including that of dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, nursing, and the allied health professions.

Contemporary and historic views regarding diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of medical conditions have been documented for thousands of years. The Edwin Smith papyrus is the first known medical treatise. Ancient medical literature often described inflictions related to warfare.

Throughout history, people have written about diseases, how human beings might contract them and what could be done to remedy it. Medicine ranged from folklore and witchcraft to modern evidence-based medicine. Among the most notable early medical descriptions are found in texts from Egypt (Edwin Smith Papyrus, Ebers Papyrus, Kahun Gynecological Papyrus), Mesopotamia (Diagnostic Handbook), India (Sushruta Samhita, Charaka Samhita), China (Huangdi Neijing), Rome (De Medicina), and Greece (De Materia Medica). Important medical works in the medieval Islamic era include texts from Persia (The Canon of Medicine of Ibn Sina), Spain (Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi's Kitab al-Tasrif), Iraq (De Gradibus), and Syria (Ibn al-Nafis' Comprehensive Book on Medicine), while important medical texts from early medieval Europe include those from England (Compendium Medicinæ) and Byzantine Greece (Medical Compendium in Seven Books).

Following Vesalius, William Harvey, Ignaz Semmelweis, Louis Pasteur, and others, the medical community have changed the way it conducts research. After incorporating the scientific method, medical literature has introduced peer review, and is currently divided into journals and textbooks.

These are publications in which the medical community shares information. The common articles are original articles, reviews and case reports.

When looking for specific information in any journal one can use the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database. Peer reviewed journals are ranked higher thus are a better source for medical information than non-peer reviewed journals.

A medical manual is literature (usually a book) describing diagnosis, treatment, management, and prognosis of various disorders. The first known medical manual is the Edwin Smith papyrus of ancient Egypt.

After consensus has been reached, it is incorporated in textbooks. There are textbooks on every medical specialty and they contain comprehensive discussion on all diseases and their diagnosis, therapy and prognosis. The first textbook to utilize experts to write specific chapters within the book was the Cecil Textbook of Medicine edited by Russell Cecil, MD in 1927. The book was an immediate international success because of the idea that single or double author medical books was outmoded, "since the scope of medical knowledge was far surpassing the capacity of any single individual to encompass". Since that time, this has been the standard. Examples are: