In the 1970’s I was probably one of the last American high school students who was told that if you wanted to go to medical school, you should learn to speak German. This was because in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Germany was so dominant in medicine that people primarily read the German medical literature. When I later did attend medical school, a professor told me that if you thought you had a new clinical discovery, you should take a sabbatical and read the prior German medical literature because there was a good chance it was already described there.