WHEELER’S TISSUE PHOSPHATES

“The Commissioner of Health directs me to call to your attention the enclosed advertisement issued by T. B. Wheeler, M.D., Company, Montreal, Canada, in which the name of the Association’s Journal is being used.”

Accompanying this brief note to The Journal from the secretary of Dr. Haven Emerson, Commissioner of the Department of Health of the City of New York, was a four page leaflet devoted to the exploitation of “Wheeler’s Tissue Phosphates.” The trend of the circular is to lead the average reader to infer that The Journal of the American Medical Association has endorsed Wheeler’s Tissue Phosphates. For example, in describing the preparation one reads:

“It embodies ... the best recent scientific opinion concerning the treatment of the disease (tuberculosis) as stated ... by the official Journal A. M. A.”

Elsewhere in the circular The Journal’s criticisms of the hypo­phosphites and the glycero­phosphates (proprietary preparations which are competitors of the Wheeler product) are quoted and twisted into a tribute to the ingredients of Wheeler’s Tissue Phosphates. Garbling quotations, distorting statements, separating phrases from their contexts and omitting qualifying clauses, all for the purpose of making out a case for some proprietary remedy is a trick as old as quackery itself. That it should be used in advertising Wheeler’s Tissue Phosphates is entirely fitting. Obviously, the T. B. Wheeler, M.D., Company esteems the opinion of The Journal on pharmacologic matters. This being the case, it should, in the interest of truth and scientific accuracy, publish in its advertising circulars just what The Journal has said about Wheeler’s Tissue Phosphates. It could not do this better than by quoting from a recent editorial note which commented on a report of the Chemical Laboratory on this preparation. Here is part of the The Journal’s comment:

“ ‘Wheeler’s Tissue Phosphates’ is an unscientific shotgun mixture whose most active and powerful drug is the alcohol it contains. That it was not years ago relegated to the realms of obsolete and discarded preparations is a commentary alike on the lack of scientific discrimination and on the power of advertising.”

Here we have “Wheeler’s Tissue Phosphates” stripped of the verbal camouflage with which its exploiters have invested it.—(Editorial from The Journal A. M. A., Sept. 22, 1917.)