Bob Cox writes “From The Baltimore Sun.
As you look at the cover of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), you might feel – just for a moment – like you’re peeking through the window of a museum of fine art.
“I consider that the heart of JAMA,” Dr. Catherine D. DeAngelis, the editor, said of the artwork adorning its covers.
That might sound odd, given that JAMA brings its nearly 600,000 subscribers some of the world’s most current and most promising research on topics ranging from hormone replacement therapy to the development of a cancer vaccine.
But the art – along with a one-page essay about the work, the artist and the era in which it was created – is designed to put physicians in touch with the part of their practice that has nothing to do with scalpels or CT scans.”
JAMA’s art
I used to read every issue of JAMA and enjoy the covers, however, until I read this article I didn’t realize the art work no longer had anything to do with medicine. It was always fun to try to spot what in the painting the art editor was trying to show the reader–usually some condition that the artist wasn’t aware of.
And just a reminder. The REAL title is JAMA and has been for over 40 years, and not Journal of the American Medical Association with the acronym in parentheses. The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association is just that and NOT JAVMA, as it is often called.