In the "olden days", I could call any hospital in the country (handy for my snowbird patients) and talk to someone in medical records who would quickly fax a few pages of relevant information.
Nowdays, after much struggle we get 30 pages of boilerplate gobbledeygook out of their EMR. Sometimes it is possible to extract some clinical information from that watery gruel.
I imagine that something like this went on in the Middle East when they were transitioning from cuneiform to hieroglyphics.
