Tradition and progress: now also a bilingual journal?

Since it was founded, in 1872, Revista Medica de Chile has published all it s contents in Spanish. Abstracts in English began to appear in 1960 and in 1962 they became mandatory for every article published. Since 1974 the Abst ract in English is presented at the beginning of the respective article. Th is is currently a regulation enforced by MEDLINE, SCI and other organizatio ns that include this journal in their indexing services. An Assistant Edito r is specifically in charge of improving the format and contents of these a bstracts, with the best available use of the English language. While Revist a Medica de chile will continue to publish in Spanish those articles origin ated in Chile and other Spanish-speaking countries, this issue of the journ al starts adding articles in English, by guest authors from English-speakin g countries. This policy will give us the opportunity to include articles i n frontier topics, written by distinguished authors.