"It is the foremost among the medical journals for ability, energy, and success: performing great services to the profession in the reporting of lectures, the publication of 'case,' and of correspondence and the discussion of topics connected with the science of medicine, embracing all the sister sciences of surgery, chemistry, magnetism...The eminent variety of its contents, and their extremely interesting (to a great extent 'popularly' interesting) character, coupled with its cheapness (as compared with the value of its contents), secure it a circle of readers including alike the eminent and the humble in all classes of the profession” (Mitchell’s, 1846).