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Dorland’s {lustrated Medical Dictionary
Dorland’s Pocket Medical Dictionary

W. B. SAUNDERS COMPANY
Pblihers

WEST WASHINGTON SQUARE PHILADELPHIA 5, PENNA.

Office of
June 22, 1955

Joshua Lederberg, Ph.D.

Department of Genetics, College of Agriculture
The University of Wisconsin

Madison 6, Wisconsin

Dear Doctor Lederberg:

Words are inadequate to express our gratitude for your
great assistance, and your equally great appreciation of the problems
involved in maintaining a dictionary such as ours. Reading your under-
standing criticism was a heart-warming experience, and my delay in
answering stemmed solely from the time taken to assimilate the mass of
information you sent us.

This is the first time responsibility for preparation of
the dictionary manuscript has rested on the intramural editorial staff
of Saunders, and there are literally thousands of problems to be solved,
which you seem to have a very good grasp of. Our ultimate answers to
them still remain to be worked out. Apropos of your comments on the un-
abridged dictionaries, it may be of interest to you to learn of informa-
tion I received from a friend who works for the G, & C. Merriam Company.
She writes me some "30 odd definers" are engaged on specific areas of
their dictionary, and the individual quota is 20 definitions a week. I
do not of course know their salary range, but assume it must be low.

Do you mind considering other questions which occurred to
me in correlating your typed suggestions and those included on the cards?
I'll attempt to simplify them as much as possible, and to facilitate your
handling of them I shall include them on separate sheets, outside the
body of this letter. All this may merely make the scratches on the sur-
face a little deeper, but I trust each correction that can be made will
contribute significantly to the desired whole. Many of my specific ques-
tions arise from a desire to establish a formula for defining analogous
terms, in belief that such a policy provides an additional safeguard
against error.

I hope that this is not too unforgivable a reaction to
your most helpful letter. To soften the blow, it occurs to me that per-
haps there are other books I could send in which you might be interested.
De you, for instance, have Braun's Bacterial Genetics and Dodson's Text~-
book of Evolution, and there is another forthcoming book, Counseling in
Medical Genetics, by Sheldon Reed. Or do I have too vague an idea of
what might interest you?

Thanking you for your helpful contributions (and may I
add?) future, as well as past, I am

Sincerely yours,

ety Sanyo
Jean Husted