Abstract
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) was first published in 1960 by the National Library of Medicine in the USA is a medical terminology thesaurus which has been revised and published every year since 1963 as the Part II issue of the January edition of Index Medicus. Terms used in this MeSH are controlled vocabularies; descriptors, and are also used for (1) making the index for Index Medicus, (2) searching MEDLARS file and (3) cataloging books, serials and audiovisual materials. The author describes a fourth purpose, other than these primary uses, for MeSH terms, namely, obtaining fundamental medical knowledge by librarians. In the previous article, the effectiveness of systematic study of MeSH terms was described, and concrete examples were given using the MeSH terms of digestive system. This time the author studied MeSH as a thesaurus taking up some terms as examples from MeSH terms of the heart, according to such publication as “Technical Notes.”
