• Evidence based medicine

The editors of this journal are like other folk—we wake up in the morning and ask ourselves ‘Why do I exist, and of what use can I be in a world awash with sexually transmitted infections?’ In this we resemble our illustrious forebears who founded the British Journal of Venereology in 1925, and wondered ‘Of what intellectual and material use will this journal be to us?’.1 Their answer was that ‘the journal will enable the worker in venereal diseases to keep abreast of progress, in his own and allied subjects, by placing before him such data as are necessary to the achievement of this end.’ As in 1925, our staples are original, applied research on diagnosis and treatment; critical reviews; reports on new diagnostics and case reports.

Our esteemed ancestors anticipated the rigours of evidence based medicine when, in their launch issue, they envisaged their hardest task as …