June 26, 1956
Dear Dr. Dennis:
It was good of you to send me the materials which you have accumulated for the Reappraisal Section. It is obvious to me that some of these materials will need a bit of seasoning before they go forward to press.
It would be my feeling that to make this important Section a success, which you would have it be, it is necessary to start off in a somewhat more felicitous manner by selecting well known authors who are publishing on questions that are well known to be controversial. However nice the analysis by Becker is, I think it would be a mistake to start off with a relatively unknown author. You include, also, an item on "Intrahepatic Cholangiojejunostomy" by Paul Hanson. Why not ask Longmire, himself, some of these questions? In other words, for the first few issues, I do think it important that you get well known names in surgery, who have published on matters, the essence of which has not been wholly absorbed by the profession. For instance, you, yourself, could make an important contribution by writing upon vagotomy for ulcerated colitis.
Now, with reference to the format, there must be some suggestion of order. We cannot conduct a section like the query and answer columns in the AMA. If these papers are to be indexed, they should start off by having a title and the author's name. In other words, the format should be very much as in any papers. In order to give this Section the proper flavor, you may have to introduce a sentence or two in the beginning of the papers of the author.
A few exchanges like those you have sent on now are in order before any papers are released for publication. It is important that we start the Section, the Reappraisal Section, off well. Dr. Ochsner and I appreciate very much the keen interest which you and Dr. Hurwitz have taken in this Section. We only want to lend help to the end that the Section gets off the ground in a manner which will attract readers to this Section.
Sincerely,
Owen H. Wangensteen, M.D.