In Memoriam: J. Russell Elkinton, MD, MACP, FRCP(L); 1910–2002; Editor, Annals of Internal Medicine, 1960–1971

Who enters medical school planning to become an editor of a medical journal? No one I have known. Certainly not Joseph Russell Elkinton, the fourth editor of this journal, Annals of Internal Medicine (1-5).

In 1959, Dr. Pincoffs, the then Editor of Annals, approaching age 70, decided to retire. The American College of Physicians had to appoint a new editor. Who should it be, and where? The College's headquarters were in Philadelphia, the city of its founding, but the operation of Annals had been split: Dr. Pincoffs' editorial office was in Baltimore and the journal's business management was in Philadelphia. The College's Board of Regents decided that the editorial office should be brought into the headquarters, so a suitable candidate had to be found in Philadelphia. The qualifications then were presumably much as they are today: an eminence in academic medicine that would support the editor's authority, intellectual qualifications based on a substantial background in medical science and clinical experience, and a capacity for judging the clarity and adequacy of authors' scientific writing. I do not know what kind of search the College conducted in looking for the right candidate, but they found the right person in Dr. Elkinton.

Russell Elkinton was a true and established Philadelphian when he was selected, although he had earned his qualifications for the editorship of Annals in part elsewhere. He was born on 12 October 1910 in Moylan, Pennsylvania, a southwestern suburb of Philadelphia, into a prominent Quaker family in the Philadelphia region (6, 7). His family members were descendants of George Elkinton, an English emigrant to America in 1673. Dr. Elkinton's undergraduate degree came from Haverford College, …