THE "Principles of Medical Ethics," formulated and published by the American Medical Association, and carrying its official endorsement, in Chapter II, Section 7, states:

    "It is incompatible with honorable standing in the profession to resort to public advertisement or private cards inviting the attention of persons affected with particular diseases; to promise radical cures; to publish cases or operations in the daily prints, or to suffer such publications to be made; to invite laymen (other than relatives who may desire to be at hand) to be present at operations; to boast of cures and remedies; to adduce certificates of skill and success, or to employ any of the other methods of charlatans."

    This is found in a small printed manual of the Code bearing date 1905; and a revised version, issued as part of the constitution and by-laws of the A.M.A. in 1925, further elaborates:

    "Solicitation of patients by physicians as individuals or collectively in groups, by whatsoever name these be called, or by institutions or organizations, whether by circulars or advertisements, or by personal communications, is unprofessional. This does not prohibit ethical institutions from a legitimate advertisement of location, physical surroundings and special class—if any—of patients accommodated. It is equally unprofessional to procure patients by indirection through solicitors or agents of any kind, or by indirect advertising, or by furnishing or inspiring newspaper or magazine comments concerning cases in which the physician is, or has been concerned. All other like self-laudations defy the traditions and lower the tone of the profession and are intolerable."

    These official regulations issuing from the medical court of final jurisdiction, appear to sew up medical practitioners rather securely against the advertising lure. Strict adherence to them would seem to debar physicians from letting the public know, either that they needed patients, or that they would know how to treat them if they had them. Like most "ethical" prohibitions that go counter both to human nature and common sense, this provision of the medical code has been more flagrantly violated, perhaps, than any of its other pietistic pretensions.

    There was never any good reason why doctors should not advertise their qualifications in a bid for sick patronage, if they sincerely believed they had something of value to offer their patients. If, on the other hand, they believe their services worthless— or even doubtful, taking pay for them is just as dishonest as advertising them. This "ethical" provision of the medical code against advertising, is part of a general scheme for creating the impression that the medical business is conducted on a higher ethical plane than other occupations and professions. That it is more nobly altruistic, more interested in the common weal, "toiling day and night in the cause of suffering humanity," to borrow one of the choice eulogisms of medical boosters.

    Now I think most people who are willing to see things as they are, and not through the aurora borealis of medical apotheosis, will agree that it is no more noble to sell a man relief from pain produced by illness, than it is to save him from the pangs of hunger by selling him bread or potatoes. The doctor who takes money for his services, therefore, is no more of an altruist than the corner grocer who takes money for his wares. True, the doctor doesn't always get money for his services, but that is no fault of his as a rule. With few exceptions, doctors charge "all the traffic will bear," and when it fails to yield enough to satisfy them, they count on making up the deficit from other patients. Perhaps if the groceryman were permitted by the custom of the country and the code of trade ethics, to maintain a sliding scale of prices adapted to the financial rating of his customers, he would no doubt gladly give a few potatoes to a poor woman and charge his wealthy patrons five dollars a pound for them.

    And there is another phase of this comparison between the doctor's calling and the tradesman's, that should not be overlooked. The man who is furnishing the necessaries of life—food, clothing, entertainment, etc., and who is not overcharging but giving honest values for our money, is far more the friend of "suffering humanity" than the doctor, who though he may stifle the pain temporarily, yet frequently lays the foundation of much greater suffering in the future by his method of doing it. It is not difficult to show, upon the basis of their own records and admissions, that the medical profession creates, and has created, for the human race, far more suffering than it ever relieved it of.

    I have already deduced in these chapters eminent medical opinion repudiating and discrediting practically the entire "regular" program. William Osier and Richard Cabot proclaim the impotency of drugs; Creighton, Crookshanks, Tebb and a host of others, attest the futility and dangers of vaccines and serums; and no less an authority than Dr. Forbes Winslow says a majority of the eminent men of his profession denounce the senselessness and wickedness of vivisection.

    "But why do you quote a few medical authorities in support of your position while scouting medical authority as a whole?" is a question frequently propounded. The answer rests on several counts: (1) Individual members of every vicious system are frequently better than the system. My war is on the medical system, not on individual doctors. (2) The fact that these medical dissenters are going counter to the majority, thereby inviting professional ostracism, is one evidence that they speak the truth. When a judge on the bench is confronted with conflicting testimony from two witnesses of equal ability, equal intelligence, and equal opportunity to know the facts, he throws the preponderance of credibility to the man who is talking to his own hurt, as against the one who is talking in his own interests. (3) Another proof that the dissenting voices in the medical profession are the truth-tellers, is that they hold very high professional rank. A doctor must be very secure both in his professional and financial status before he can treat himself to the luxury of speaking the truth! (4) It should not be urged against my supporting medical authorities that they are in the minority. Authority is more a matter of weight than of numbers, and all experience proves that those who are speaking the truth about anything are always few, in comparison with the multitude who through ignorance, indolence, or self-interest, are willing to help propagate a lie.

    And lastly, I cite medical authorities in support of my argument, for the benefit of the doctor-ridden ones who are unable to accept any fact about health or disease except on a doctor's ipse dixit. The failure of orthodox medicine to measure up to the requirement of maintaining health in a community, however, is not a question of medical authority altogether, either pro or con. Evidences of that failure are all about us. Everywhere the grim figure of ill-health stalks ominously in the midst of those still going about their daily avocations. Few persons reach middle age to-day without developing some secret, gnawing malady which makes the latter part of their lives a dragging misery. All the most dreaded and devastating diseases, cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, heart trouble and insanity, still exact a heavy death-toll, and according to Dr. Alexis Carrel, they are more fatal than they were fifty years ago.

    While all this has been happening, "regular," orthodox medicine has been in monopolistic control of the therapeutic situation. It has manned all the health-boards, dictated all the health legislation, framed all the medical practice acts—which determine who shall and who shall not minister to the sick, and it has had complete control of all public and most private hospitals. To the extent, therefore, that it has urged the acceptance of its methods, fostered in the laity a blind trust in its teachings, and consistently fought and hounded every other school of healing, the medical system must accept responsibility for the prevalence of disease in the world.

    This it has accomplished in the United States—whatever may be true of other countries—by the development and perfection of the most colossal, the most all-inclusive publicity machine ever known, never surpassed—if equaled—by any political party of the world. Some idea of its vastness and multiform ramifications, may be obtained by reading the reports made by Dr. Ray G. Hulburt of Chicago, chairman of the Osteopathic Publicity Committee, and printed in the January, February, and March (1925) issues of the Journal of American Osteopathic Association. In putting his osteopathic brethren wise to what is going on in medical advertising, Dr. Hulburt offers no special criticism of it. Rather does he hold up the energetic example of the medical publicity hosts for emulation by osteopaths.

    Of course the medical propaganda is not called "advertising"—oh, no! They have another name for it—which "smells as sweet." They call it "education." Concerning it Dr. Hulburt says:

    "Medical 'education' of the public is progressing fast. The plans of the American Medical Association are growing more numerous, more complicated, more efficient. There is no use in trying to stop them. We could adopt some of them to advantage. Some of the propaganda is misleading, false, sinister. To a certain extent, we can oppose and thwart these parts of it. No matter what we mean to do about the campaign as a whole, or its various details, we need to know the facts.

    "The A.M.A. maintains a far-flung battle line, fighting both offensively and defensively. State societies are supplementing its work. Health officers and health boards of States, counties, and cities are doing their part. Individual physicians are fighting in the ranks, in accordance with the plans of various organizations. Others are doing free lance work by supplying newspapers with syndicated 'health' columns, writings books and pamphlets.

    "And some are using guerrilla tactics, writing and lecturing against 'irregular' methods and practitioners. Most of these pay scant attention to facts or truth. The secretaries of the California and the Colorado Medical Examining Boards have been urging for several years 'a constructive, educational campaign' in self-defense against chiropractors and others who were encroaching too fast."

    "At the 1921 Convention of the A.M.A., the speaker of the house of delegates made a strong plea for impersonal medical publicity, and detailed several plans which he considered practical for the organization to undertake. The president of the A.M.A. spoke for the idea, as did other leaders. Many medical magazines published favorable editorials. By 1922, the speaker of the A.M.A. house of delegates advocated the appropriation of $75,000 to defray the expenses of an active constructive plan of public health education. He urged action. He mentioned 'the demand, the need, the urgency for the discontinuance of further temporizing methods, etc.'"

    "In another year Hygeia was launched and carrying the message of the allopaths into the homes and schools of the nation. Abstracts of articles in this magazine are supplied to newspapers all over the country, linking the thought of health with the thought of allopathic methods wherever possible. Every school superintendent in the United States has been or is to be circularized on Hygeia as a school proposition. School officials of New York City circulated 28,000 copies of one issue to their teachers. The A.M.A. took advantage of the recent flurry over physical examinations of school children in Chicago, to stimulate the circulation of Hygeia among people interested in schools everywhere. In at least one State, it is reported that Hygeia is being sent to all members of the Legislature. This is probably the case wherever legislative fights are in prospect. These are only samples of the ramifications of efforts to advertise and boost the methods and theories of Allopathy."

    We will interrupt Dr. Hulburt's illuminating report on the advertising methods of the "regulars" at this point, to recall to our readers one section of the provision against advertising contained in the "Principles of Medical Ethics" quoted at the beginning of this chapter:

    "It is equally unprofessional to procure patients by indirection, by indirect advertising, or by furnishing or inspiring newspaper or magazine comments concerning cases in which the physician has been or is concerned."

    Now what is the point in all this filling of newspaper and magazine space with allopathic copy, extolling the merits and superiority of allopathic procedure and damning every other therapeutic measure as "quackery" and "pseudo-science," if it is not to fill allopathic offices with patients and allopathic coffers with cash? Would the sanctimonious formulators of the "ethical" proviso call that obtaining patients "by indirection"? Probably not, since they are the same gentlemen who instigated the publicity campaign; and sheltering behind a different name for the same thing has been an allopathic alibi from time immemorial. The A.M.A. does not hesitate to violate its own sponsored ethical code, if it can escape censure by the ingenious device of substituting the word "education" for "advertisement," even though the "ethical" prohibition applies quite as strongly to "groups of physicians, by whatever name they may be called—institutions or organizations"—as to individual doctors.

    The deep-laid astuteness of the medical publicity scheme is revealed, not only in the name subterfuge, which enables the M.D.'s to get by with their pose of being "too proud to advertise"; but also in the fact that by calling their advertising "education," they can avoid paying for much of it. This permits them to hook it up with schools, churches, men's and women's clubs, and all other supposedly "educational" organizations, through which they can get a lot of free advertising.

    Women's clubs have been a particularly fertile field for medical propaganda. About a year ago, some Chicago alienist gave it out over his weighty scientific signature, that "women are 20 per cent crazier than men"; which pronouncement gave much offense in feminist circles. I thought it showed rank ingratitude in that "alienist" M.D. to make a statement of that sort, for I think in most people's observation, that women are 50 per cent "crazier about doctors" than men. It seems to be peculiarly a feminine weakness to develop a soft spot—somewhere—for doctors and preachers.

    For this reason the people who are trying to rescue children's bodies from the destroying clutch of medical paternalism—beginning with school inspection and ending in vaccination, Schick-testing, tonsillectomy and what not—get little aid and comfort from women's organizations, they who are supposed to be peculiarly interested in the welfare of children.

    Continuing his report of the medical publicity machine in the January number (1925) of the Journal of the A. O. A., Dr. Hulburt says:

    "About the time Hygeia was launched, efforts were made to connect the A.M.A. with 70 big daily newspapers constituting an alliance which should carry syndicated health articles coming directly from A.M.A. headquarters. Their editors also were to avail themselves of the opportunity to write or wire to A.M.A. headquarters to get 'scientific' facts in connection with any news story which might show a medical slant.

    "By this time, too, a number of State societies were getting up speed. Massachusetts was on the way with Dr. Frothingham's committee 'to investigate the Cults,' and the widespread publication of its 'findings.'

    "The Illinois Medical Society, at its 1923 meeting, after the result of its questionnaire, "What did you do the last time you were sick?"—was made public, showing only 14 per cent of the laity loyal to Allopathy, voted unanimously in favor of a newspaper educational campaign, and to raise money from its members for carrying out the plans. A lay publicity man was secured to manage the work which very soon included much more than newspaper propaganda. A speakers' bureau was organized, which already has about 200 doctors as volunteer speakers and is still growing. In the two months of September and October, 1924, in this one State, 108 appointments were made for these speakers to appear before various lay organizations, such as Lions', Kiwanis, Optimist, Rotary, Parent-Teachers and Women's clubs, Farm bureaus, Trade and Fraternal organizations. All this, in addition to addresses which the lay publicity director himself gives on 'Meeting You Halfway,' and 'The Romance of Modern Medicine.'

    "The Illinois Committee also has arrangements with four radio stations in Chicago, one in Elgin and one in St. Louis, for giving 140 ten-minute talks during the coming year.

    "The Illinois plan includes magazine articles, some of which have already been accepted for use in Chicago magazines which have a combined circulation in Illinois alone of 350,000. The newspaper material has already been used in well over 100 newspapers of the State. Close cooperation with branch and county medical societies, is part of the program.

    "Other States are falling into line. At its September, 1923, meeting, the Indiana Society appropriated $7,000 'to provide accurate information to the public by lectures and publication as to what is being done in the medical sciences, and to aid the local medical associations in bettering conditions in their communities.' One of the chief things done by the Indiana bureau during the past year has been the preparation of newspaper propaganda and securing its publication throughout the State. Speakers are also being provided for public meetings."

    "Providing accurate information as to what is being done in the medical sciences," is the medical publicity-man's euphemism for the mendacious statements and reports circulated in the lay press as to the efficacy and value of vaccination, Schick-testing, etc. Such reports are frequently contradicted in the medical journals by the more conscientious and responsible voices in the medical profession. While from every issue of Hygeia, and in a thousand special articles in other journals, in countless unauthorized and unidentified news items and syndicated "health" material from such artists as W. A. Evans and William Brady, M.D., the unsuspecting public is being constantly regaled with the marvellous "immunizing" benefits of toxin-antitoxin, the Journal of the American Medical Association, of April 5, 1924 (pp. 1093-98) carried a detailed report of 62 cases of quick death following its use, the time of taking off varying from a few minutes to a few hours— prolonged to days in several instances.

    True, these cases were spread over a number of years; true also that the reporter of them was affirming and reaffirming his faith in the merits of the horse serum inoculation and essaying to establish an alibi for the fatalities. This is true of the seven cases of "anaphylaxis" reported in the Journal of the A.M.A., January, 1926, by Dr. Chester A. Stewart, of Minneapolis. "Anaphylaxis" is the new name for the severe reactions that frequently follow a second dosage of toxin-antitoxin. Thus Dr. Stewart, in the aforesaid article, describes the trouble as "Anaphylactic Reactions following administration of serums to children previously immunized against diphtheria,' (italics mine), and says:

    "The administration of toxin-antitoxin to render children immune to diphtheria, is unquestionably a valuable procedure; although having the distinct disadvantage of sensitizing these individuals to horse serum. Subsequent administrations of serums as therapeutic and prophylactic measures undoubtedly are accompanied with the danger of anaphylactic reactions."

    Such "anaphylactic reactions"—as described by Dr. Stewart—are recognized by the distressing symptoms of rapid breathing, high temperature (104 degrees), dropsical swelling of the tissues involving tongue, face, hands and feet, and extreme redness of skin, called in the medical lingo "erythema" and "angio-neurotic edema." None of Dr. Stewart's cases proved fatal, he says, though he had to resort to heroic measures to pull some of them through; and the trouble reappeared in another form months after he suppressed it, indicating the tendency of serum poisoning to linger in the blood and bring forth later fruits.

    Many like cases of serum-sickness—some of them fatal—have been reported in medical literature, and Dr. Stewart in his article warns:

    "As a result of the widespread employment of toxin-antitoxin clinicians will undoubtedly encounter an increased frequency of the incidence of anaphylaxis."

But the point to be emphasized in connection with medical publicity, is, that while the writers in medical journals—equally with those m lay publications—may extol the merits of the "immunizing" fluids, they also point out the dangers and fatalities; whereas the rainbow artists of the medical publicity machine who write for newspapers, magazines, and public-health bulletins, systematically and sedulously suppress and distort the facts.

    The burden of the medical publicity chorus—ringing through all the lay publicity channels—is that smallpox, diphtheria, and typhoid, can be absolutely prevented by "active immunization" with vaccine-virus, toxin-antitoxin, and anti-typhoid soup. There is never a quaver of doubt in the voluminous output, nor a hint of "anaphylactic" fatalities even in the undertones of the serological diapason. But we find both the doubt and the casualties reported in more reliable quarters.

    We have the admission from medical—and even some public-health authorities, that "three doses of toxin-antoxin fail to immunize in a certain percentage of cases—variously given from 5 to 25 per cent." This admission is made in the N. Y. State Department of health Quarterly for July, 1924, page 77. The most that a leading manufacturer of the stuff claims for his product, is that "immunity still persists in over 90 per cent of children immunized six years ago." This statement was carried in his advertisement in California and Western Medicine, for November, 1924.

    But the United States Public Health Reports, issued November 21, 1924, gave "the estimated expectancy of diphtheria per l,000 inhabitants in the United States as 1.30." In other words, out of every thousand persons of all ages, an average of 998 would be free from diphtheria anyway, without any toxin-antitoxin being used. And since this is a larger percentage of immunity than is promised even by the manufacturers and purveyors of the serum immunity, the suspicion obtains naturally, that all this enthusiasm for serumizing and Schick-testing everybody is being supplied by the people who have serums to sell.

    When Dr. J. F. Baldwin, a few years ago, lost his official head as president of the Ohio State Medical Society for saying something like this to his colleagues, the suspicion was planted in some people's minds that the hand that rocks the vaccine factory is also the hand that rocks the medical profession. When we consider the discrepancies between the statements of responsible physicians in medical literature, and the misleading propaganda of the medical publicity machine; and consider further, that for one layman who reads medical journals, 10,000 or more read the newspapers; that suspicion takes on some of the aspects of certainty.

    The smug organization of doctor politicians known as the A.M.A., with headquarters on North Dearborn Street, in Chicago, are playing a double-header role as guardians of the people's health and sales agents for the vaccine-serum interests. Through its pious solicitude about the public health, political medicine is able to harness its publicity machine to many good and worthy causes and thereby enhance its own prestige. When they use public enterprises to further their own aims, the allopathic conscience is clear, of course. Having persuaded themselves that they are the people and wisdom will die with them, it is easy for them to think their work essential to public welfare and their propaganda in the interest of humanity.

    With this point of view, it is natural they should seize the public health service, the public schools, the Children's Bureau, the Army, the Navy, the Life Insurance Companies, the press and the radio, to become the vehicles of allopathic propaganda and strengthen the political power of the "regulars." By every ingenious device known to the press agent's art, every news item pertaining to health is given an allopathic slant. By this means, when the average individual thinks of health, he thinks in terms of allopathic procedure.

    The president of the New York County Medical Society, in 1925, Dr. Samuel J. Kopetzky, in his inaugural address on January 26, stressed this point:

    "We should furnish the press, the radio and other worthy publicity agencies with bona fide news, in the confident expectation that they, on their side, will cooperate with us to the end that all medical news published shall be authentic and trustworthy, and thus beneficial to the people.

    "It seems clear to me, that there is a very definite obligation along this line on the part of those who control publicity channels, and I am glad to express my belief that this is being more and more manifestly observed by those who control our great newspapers and other avenues of public information."

    "Authentic and trustworthy" medical news means, of course, that issuing from official medicine and carrying the stamp of A.M.A. approval. In order that there may be no mistake about the cooperation" of those "who control the publicity channels," it is currently reported that the A.M.A. keeps a paid employee on the staff of every important newspaper—with one exception—in the United States, whose important duty it is to supervise all news matter pertaining to "health" or "medicine"—these twain being synonymous—coming in to the office, and to see to it that nothing creeps into the paper which is prejudicial to A.M.A. interests.

    Whether this be strictly true or not—and it is one of the things which it is hard to prove—every one who has ever tried to get by one of these important editors with a bit of copy showing an anti-medical slant, realizes that it might as well be true. The practical net result is the same as if it were. The power of the medical publicity machine is evinced quite as much by what it is able to keep out of circulation, as by the enormous amount of propaganda it keeps running.

    I was given a striking example of this a few months ago when Sir Arbuthnot Lane was visiting in this country, and I tried to get a story about some of his pronouncements into one of the larger New York papers. It was promptly and unanimously declined by the Times, the World and the Herald-Tribune. Indeed, the press of the country was strangely and ominously silent about Sir Arbuthnot's visit, and his utterances while here received scant notice anywhere. Why was this? Sir Arbuthnot Lane is quite an important figure in the medical world of London—Surgeon to half a dozen large hospitals and private physician to the King of England. From the journalistic standpoint, any conspicuous personage is "news," and the literary value of any story about him is secondary. The ban on the Arbuthnot Lane stuff can only be interpreted in the light of some of his heretical teachings:

    "There is but one cause of disease—poison, toxemia, most of which is created in the body by faulty living habits and faulty elimination."

    "We have simply been studying germs and test-tubes when we should have been studying diet and drainage," declared Sir Arbuthnot. What! This audacious English surgeon laying unholy hands on the precious germ theory—promulgated by Father Pasteur and honored by all the apostles of serology! But what would happen to vaccination fees and the serum industry if the causative germ theory were sent to the "scientific" scrap-heap? No, the A.M.A. would show Sir Arbuthnot a thing or two.

    For this was not the least of Sir Arbuthnot's offenses. "The head and front" of them was his declaring cancer to be a constitutional disease, "which can be prevented in practically every instance by adherence to a vegetarian diet and maintaining proper drainage of the cells." Now what would happen to the branch of surgery which battens on cancer miseries if that sort of doctrine is permitted to go unchallenged? Not caring to argue the matter with the English surgeon, the A.M.A. sought to suppress him with silence.

    Had Sir Arbuthnot Lane asked me, I could have told him how unpopular the constitutional or blood theory of cancer is with the powerful organization of cancer-surgeons and radiologists calling themselves "The American Society for the Control of Cancer," from a brief encounter I had with them in the Summer of 1922. This Society was organized in New York City, in May, 1913, by delegates from all the principal medical societies of the United States, and its present membership includes about 500 leading surgeons, radiologists, and pathologists attached to hospitals specializing in surgery, radium and X-ray therapy.

    The "Society for Control" holds to the local theory of cancer, and prescribes "early and radical excision as the only hope of cure." This prescription in amplified measure rings through all its literature and lectures, and beats with special insistence into the brain of the hapless public during the Society's yearly "educational" feature known as "Cancer Week." The volume and scope of the "Cancer Week" output can best be told in the Society's own report of one of its Fall publicity campaigns for cancer surgery:

    "600,000 persons were reached by lectures. Several hundred thousand more received the message by short addresses in churches, lodges and theaters, while countless other thousands saw display posters on street corners, trolley cars and bill-boards, or displayed on movie screens. Upwards of 5,000,000 pieces of literature were distributed, and the newspaper and magazine publicity covered pretty generally the whole reading public. A conservative estimate puts the number of persons receiving the vital facts about cancer control, directly or indirectly, during those seven days, at 10,000,000."

    It may well be doubted if any other organization, political or otherwise, ever conducted a more extensive and zealous publicity campaign in any cause or interest. "The vital facts about cancer control," mentioned in the above report, according to the local theorists, are: (1) that "Cancer is not a constitutional disease; and (2) that it starts as a small local growth which if taken in time, can often be entirely removed by surgery, X-ray and radium. The other "vital facts" listed by the Society for Control are not very vital, and these two if adjudged by the net result of their practical application, are vitally wrong.

    If cancer is a local disease, then surely the local remedies should apply in at least half the cases. But though they have been cutting and burning out cancer since Bablyon was young, the records still show over 90 per cent of those once affected with it dying of it, and that it is steadily on the increase in all civilized countries. According to figures furnished by Frederick L. Hoffman, an acknowledged authority on cancer statistics, the cancer death-rate in the United States rose from 87.9 per 100,000 of population in 1913—the year the "American Society for the Control of Cancer" was organized—to 101.5 in 1921. The latest Census figures show one person in ten past the age of 40 who dies in this country now, dying of cancer—about 90,000 deaths a year, with an increase of 5,816 death in 1924 over those in 1923.

    With these and other facts gleaned from careful research, in mind, I obtained permission to speak on the subject of cancer for fifteen minutes over the WJZ Radio phone in Newark, N. J., in July, 1922. In this radio talk I explained the constitutional or blood theory of cancer, affirming it to be the outcome of slow chronic poisoning—autotoxemia for the most part, produced by wrong living habits, and not the mysterious malady the local theorists proclaim it. In support of this view, I cited not only the physiological facts, but a number of eminent medical authorities in this country and abroad. Among Americans I named the late Willard Parker, Professor of Surgery, for thirty years at Columbia University; Dr. L. Duncan Bulkley, founder of the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital and Senior Physician to it; Laureston A. Merriam, a medical Big Gun of the Middle West; and Dr. Horace Packard, of the Boston University—all supporters of the constitutional theory. In England, (I cited among older authorities, William Lambe, John Abernethy, Sir James Paget and Sir Astley Cooper, and among moderns, Herbert Snow, Alexander Haig and Robert Bell. At that time I had not heard of Arbuthnot Lane, and he apparently had not paid much attention to the exponents of the constitutional view in his own country—whom I have named—until J. Ellis Barker, a layman, brought them to his notice, since he speaks of it as "a great flood of light recently poured upon cancer."

    The WJZ Radio station, from which I had sent out my brief message to the cancer-stricken, was the property of the Westinghouse Company; and a few days later I was called to the office of Physical Culture and shown a copy of a letter addressed to the Vice-president of the Westinghouse Company by the Director of Cancer Research at Columbia University, New York. This department of the Columbia University Medical School is called the "Crocker Institute for Cancer Research," from the name of the San Francisco man who gave the money to establish it. From the copy of the letter shown to me, the Research Director's name had been erased, but in a personal interview with the Westinghouse official, Mr. W. H. Easton, I learned that the writer of the letter was Dr. Francis Carter Wood, titular head of Crocker Institute. Mr. Easton afterwards confirmed this in a letter to me. Dr. Wood's letter to Mr. Easton follows:

    "DEAR SIR: I am astonished and pained to hear of some stuff that was put out recently from the WJZ Station, where a female quack was allowed to do a lot of advertising, roasting the doctors and making silly statements about cancer being curable by diet. If any one of your officers wants to try that he will as surely die as if nothing had been done for him.

    "It is most unfortunate that this lecture should have aroused so much interest, and that a big concern like the Westinghouse Company should have helped to spread such dangerous doctrine. I can safely say there are 90,000 doctors in the United States who know that what this woman says is not true. If it were true, then cancer would be hopeless from the beginning. For if it is a blood disease, no operation could reach it. But any doctor knows that this is a lie!

    "I hope you will put a stop to any further broadcasting of this nature. Although the mischief is already done in this case, there may be other quacks who will want to put out similar dangerous statements.

                        "Very truly yours,

            (Signed) "FRANCIS CARTER WOOD."
Cancer Research, Columbia University.
New York, July —, 1922.
            (Italics in the above letter all mine.)

    Several significant pointers in this letter are worthy of notice. First, it conveys the amazing intelligence that a dignified head of cancer research in Columbia University should feel impelled to notice—and to combat—the idle vaporings of "a silly quack"! Second, the admission that "it is most unfortunate that this lecture should have aroused so much interest."

    Apparently the great multitude of the cancer-plagued are not so docile and contented under surgical preachment and ministrations as Dr. Wood could wish, and have their ears tuned in for some other "message of hope" than the operating table. But no other message shall reach them if Dr. Wood and his associates in the "American Society for Control" can have their way about putting the cloture on press, radio and every other avenue of information. This they have done, and are doing, in fine imitation of that noble historic figure—the dog-in-the-manger. In the thirteen years that the Society has been organized they have shown not a shred of ability in "controlling" cancer—and only in increasing the death-rate; but they have demonstrated very conclusively that they can and will control the line of talk about it that gets out to the public. If they were to amend their title and call themselves "The American Society for the Control of Cancer Propaganda," they could make their achievements square better with their pretensions. The Francis Carter Wood letter illustrates one method of control. The Westinghouse official, a busy man with neither time nor inclination for cancer research, and doubtless entertaining the conventional fiction that the doctor is an expert "who knows his job," would naturally be more impressed by what "90,000 doctors," headed by the director of cancer research at Columbia University, might think or say on the subject, than by what "a silly female quack" might say. And Dr. Wood had very carefully refrained from mentioning in his letter that "this woman"—abusing the confidence of the Radio Station—had quoted in support of her argument some of the greatest cancer authorities of the world. When Dr. Wood was later publicly confronted with this letter, he told the newspaper reporter that he "didn't recall saying anything derogatory of Mrs. Hale"; and that his only comment for publication then was that "you can't cure cancer with carrots and cabbage!"

    When Sir William Arbuthnot Lane came three years later preaching the gospel of "carrots and cabbage" as a preventive—if not a cure for cancer, quite naturally he wasn't given a look-in at the ''American Society for the Control of Cancer Propaganda." He was not invited to address them, and it was probably due to the Society's controlling hand that Sir Arbuthnot got so little space in the newspapers. The following story is a case in point:

    In the January, 1923, issue of the Physical Culture Magazine there appeared a story entitled "Cancer Cured by Cleansing Diet." It purported to be the case histories of four women, each suffering from a different type of incurable malignancy—so pronounced by the medical experts attending them. Yet all four had restored themselves to health—after being abandoned by the M.D.'s as hopeless—through a consistent regimen of fasting and dieting. The story was given as first-hand information by the sufferers themselves, except one case reported by the nurse of the patient, in personal letters to the magazine writer who arranged them for publication in Physical Culture.

    One of these women had inoperable cancer of the stomach; a second had cancer of the uterus, which had been both cut out and burned (with radium) out at the famous Mayo clinic in Rochester; a third had an inoperable tumor in her head which affected her vision; and the fourth case was that of a New York woman with cancer of the rectum who was operated on once at St. Luke's Hospital, and afterwards her trouble was pronounced inoperable and incurable by several leading pathologists. This case I saw, both at the height of the trouble and sixteen months later when the woman was apparently well, and I can confirm the essentials of her story. (Names and addresses of all four cases were vouched for.) Quite a remarkable recital, and one to give inspiration and hope to other cancer sufferers who might read it. So thought Bernarr Macfadden, publisher of Physical Culture, and in the full-page display advertisement of the magazine issue containing it which he was running in the New York Times, that cancer story was given a conspicuous place. A few days after the January issue went on the news-stands, I chanced to be in the Physical Culture editorial office when the head of the Times's advertising department came in to say the Times would have to decline any more Physical Culture advertising without reserving the right to censor out such articles as "Cancer Cured by Cleansing Diet." The Times was impelled to this action, he stated, because of the protesting letters pouring into its office from eminent physicians and surgeons in the city!

    Now please note the absence of the usual medical pretext of inveighing against "quack remedies"—caustic plasters, ointments and patent medicines. For these women had resorted to no nostrums, had done nothing except regulate their diet and other living habits on hygienic lines, intelligently. And you would suppose, wouldn't you, that the surgical and radium experts who had failed to relieve these afflicted ones and abandoned them to their fate, might have rejoiced to hear of their good fortune in finding a way to help themselves? But after you have studied the idiosyncrasies of the medical system, you learn that it is as offensive and "dangerous to interfere with its mortuary plans as with obediently concealed a lucrative ad—for which Physical Culture paid not less than $1,700—at its behest. Nor is its power limited to control of the press, the radio and the various publicity channels. It has yet other means of throttling opposition and compelling acquiescence in its demands. When, in the Medical Record for February 19, 1921, Dr. L. Duncan Bulkley, the venerable founder of the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital, and the most conspicuous exponent of the constitutional theory of cancer in this country, called attention to the rapid increase both in the incidence and mortality of cancer since the Society for Control was organized, he was thrown out of the hospital he had founded and given the greater part of his life toward upbuilding. He was deprived of the twelve beds which had been assigned him for medicinal and dietetic treatment of cancer, and his cancer clinic for out-patients along the same lines was abolished. It was ordered by the Board of Governors which Dr. Bulkley himself had established, that only surgery should rule in the cancer wards of the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital.

    And this was only the beginning of a series of studied attacks on this aged physician whose long devotion to the study of cancer and his numerous writings on the subject had carried his name as a recognized authority all around the world. An acrimonious criticism of his book, "Cancer and its Non-surgical Treatment," which appeared in the Journal of the A.M.A. October 8, 1921, was quickly followed by a letter to the editor from the New York Skin and Cancer Medical Board, disclaiming all responsibility for Dr. Bulkley's views and "regretting that the name of the hospital had been associated with this and similar publications which so completely misrepresent its policies." Then on April 3, 1923, Dr. Bulkley received formal notification that the American Association for Cancer Research had voted unanimously at its March meeting to drop his name from its membership.

    Organized Medicine's malevolent persecution of its non-conformist members, especially such distinguished representatives as Drs. Abrams and Bulkley in America, Robert Bell and Arbuthnot Lane in England, should forever set at rest the question as to whether there is any scientific principle involved in these therapeutic disputes. When official medicine rails at "quacks" and eminent medical men who oppose its policies with equal ictus and virulence, the discerning layman must conclude that scientific inquiry has nothing to do with it. The conflict is an economic one, pure and simple; the snarl of the jungle beast when the food preserves are threatened. In the August Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, Dr. Hulburt says: "The trend of the medical profession toward paid advertising and toward the further development of many other avenues of publicity has shown steady and rapid progress in the past eight months."

    While this may be a more obvious departure from the "ethical" standard set by the A.M.A. in the "Principles," it is far more honorable for the medical profession to pay for its advertising in the ordinary commercial way, both from the standpoint of business integrity and square dealing with the public, than to work its endless camouflages of publicity through its "educational" associations Everything, whether good or bad, is so much the worse for a pretence. The lay world would have much greater respect for the medical profession if it "called a spade a spade" in the advertising game, and paid for its space like any other business. Why not?