Readers will notice that beginning with this issue, your monthly Journal has become a bimonthly publication, six issues a year rather than ten. This is done to allow our talented but overburdened staff to focus on maintaining the high quality of each issue, both in paper and in digital format. This is not a step we take lightly, recognizing our monthly tradition extends over a century back. Our Journal’s roots touch the state’s first medical journal published by Drs. N. L. Clarke and Hugh H. Haralson of Meridian, which appeared in September 1891 as The Mississippi Medical Monthly, soon becoming the “Official Organ of the Mississippi State Medical Association and its Component Societies.”1 The publication would evolve under this name and by 1904 first assume our current name: the Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association. That monthly journal would cease publication, and The Mississippi Doctor, which was created in 1922, would become the monthly medical journal of our association, until the birth of the new Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association in January 1960.
Since June of 2018, we have been following the example of other monthlies with two months designated as double issues, which allowed for a break from the monthly stresses of production.2 Over the last five years, this has been a workable schedule, but your Publications Committee, which oversees this publication, is committed to maintaining your JMSMA as an influential scientific publication of extraordinary quality and recognizes that this publication is largely created by a relatively small team. Becoming bimonthly (every two months) will allow us to maintain the high quality of each issue and continue to serve as the voice of Mississippi physicians. Your Journal will also maintain its lovely look and layout, as well as its humanities and editorial features. Remember to let MSMA know if you desire a printed copy (all of our readers should) and continue to enjoy the brilliant digital beauty of this publication.
The great Russian writer and physician Anton Chekhov had many philanthropies during his short life, usually focused on education and health. In October 1895, he sought funding to support a medical journal (the Surgical Chronicle) and even argued in a letter that the “survival of a good surgical journal would be more valuable than performing 20,000 successful operations.”3 I share Chekhov’s enthusiasm for good medical journals, and ours remains one of the best around, perhaps even more valuable than 20,000 successful operations.
Contact me at drluciuslampton@gmail.com. — Lucius M. Lampton, MD, Editor