[English or German? The language of medicine based on the bibliographic data appearing in the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenscrift (1920 to 1995)].

AIM OF STUDY

To describe and analyse the frequency of English and German in the bibliographical references from the original articles published in "Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift" during the past 75 years (1920-1995).

METHODS

The language of publication of 16,001 references from 800 original papers, at the rate of 50 articles per year at intervals of 5 years, was determined.

RESULTS

The percentage of references in German has been decreasing during the whole studied period: 90.1% in 1920, 85.9% in 1935, 75.8% in 1950, 44.1% in 1965, 31.0% in 1980, and 16.4% in 1995. The percentage of references in English, on the contrary, has continued to increase: 3.2% in 1920, 10.6% in 1935, 21.5% in 1950, 50.0% in 1965, 66.2% in 1980, and 82.8% in 1995.

CONCLUSION

Even though the importance of English has been increasing during the entire considered period, it did not clearly supplant German as the main language of medicine in Germany until 1975.