The Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Abstract

This is our 50th anniversary year. We use anniversaries to remember the past, in celebration or commemoration, and anniversaries bring a definite poignancy. The word anniversary was probably first used when describing Catholic feasts to commemorate saints, although none of the editors-in-chief has aspired to canonisation. The Latin-based term for a 50th anniversary would be a semicentennial or a quinquagenary, although the alternative Golden Jubilee is less of a mouthful. The year 1965, the 100th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War, saw the arrival in Vietnam of the first official contingent of US combat troops (Lyndon B Johnson had just been sworn in as president) and the first Australian and New Zealand troops. There were huge protest marches in Washington against the Vietnam War. Martin Luther King led civil rights freedom marches in the southern states. India fought Pakistan and Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) fought Sonny Liston. Che Guevara gave his resignation to Fidel Castro and left Cuba. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to François Jacob, André Lwoff and Jacques Monod from the Institut Pasteur ‘for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis’. The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov, who joined the Bolshevik army at 13, fought in the Russian civil war and then wrote his epic novels about the civil war, including the confronting masterpiece And Quiet Flows the Don. The Beatles performed the first ever stadium rock concert in front of a crowd of 55 600 at Shea Stadium in New York City. Bob Dylan released the album Highway 61 Revisited, including the song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. T.S. Eliot and Winston Churchill died and J.K. Rowling was born. The estimated world population of 3.33 billion was half the current population of 6.97 billion. Much has changed in the world in the last 50 years and much has changed in paediatrics. In this issue, members of the journal's editorial panel have written or commissioned articles to illustrate how much has changed in their specialty in such a relatively short time. It is fascinating to speculate what our successors will write in 2065.