The Standard Nomenclature of Diseases and Operations, now edited by and published for the American Medical Association, has been accepted throughout the United States as the definitive guide to the nomenclature of disease and of surgical procedures since it first appeared in 1933. It is widely used in hospitals and by doctors as the classification by which indexes are set up. The numerical code numbers assigned to every possible condition or operation make it possible for this to be done in a logical, standard way.
Numerical codes make possible the collection of large quantities of data and the use of such information through punched cards with their high-speed sorting, tabulating, and listing. However, there has been a belief that, because of the detail possible in the Standard Nomenclature, it is not so well suited to such a system as would be a classification with wider, less specific groupings and, therefore,