REPORT OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
The most important interest which this Nation has to guard is human life and health. The conservation of National vitality is fundamental to all plans for the conservation of property and material welfare. As the life is more than meat and the body more than raiment, so is the preservation of health and the avoidance of unnecessary sickness and death of far greater importance than any other interests. Realizing this, the American Medical Association, the National organization of the American medical profession, has been in hearty sympathy with the Conservation movement from its inception. Composed of 52 State and Territorial associations and 1997 local branches with over 70,000 members, this Association has for years advocated the conservation of human life through the abolition of preventable diseases and the betterment of sanitary and hygienic conditions with a view to making the future work of the profession prevention rather than cure. For the accomplishment of these purposes it is today carrying out a number of important lines of work:
1—The American Medical Association has, since its organization in 1847, labored constantly for the elevation of medical schools and of the standard of medical education. Especially during the last five years it has, through its Council on Medical Education, carried on a system of inspection of medical schools with the publication of reports thereon, which has materially raised the standard of medical education and has eliminated a considerable number of low-grade institutions. It is obvious that any increase in efficiency of the medical profession of the present or of the future cannot but result in increased economy of health. The Association is glad to report that medical education in the United States is today upon a higher plane than ever before, and that the public is coming more and more to realize the value of a thorough scientific training for those who undertake the care of the sick.
2—Through its publication, The Journal of the American Medical Association, it is constantly laboring to improve the economic condition of the profession, recognizing as a general principle the fact that a poverty-stricken doctor is a dangerous doctor, both to the profession and to the community. The physician who is not able to procure proper instruments and drugs, or who through poverty cannot keep up with the progress of the profession or secure the necessary books and medical journals for his instruction, may and often does become an actual danger to his patients. Proper efforts on the part of the profession for its own material well-being will result in a better class of physicians and consequently in better medical services to patients.
3—One of the most important activities of the Association in the past five years has been the work of our Chemical Laboratory established for the investigation of pharmaceutical preparations offered to physicians for administration to patients, and for the analysis of so-called patent medicines sold directly to the public. This work has been carried on through the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry supported by the Association, and has resulted in a much-needed reform in pharmaceutical products. Many preparations which were carelessly, ignorantly, or fraudulently compounded, as well as many others which were sold under false representations, have been investigated and the results published to the medical profession. Although much yet remains to be accomplished, the reform in pharmaceutical preparations has already resulted in an enormous amount of benefit to the people through the enlightenment and education of the profession on this important question. An investigation of "patent medicines" has also been carried on, and many of the preparations offered to the public have been shown, by chemical analysis, to be fraudulent; some are positively harmful, some are harmless but are not as represented; while extravagant, absurd, and impossible claims, false testimonials, and misleading advertisements, are common to many of these preparations. The Association, by its work, has exposed many swindlers and fakirs, and as a result has earned their bitter antagonism.
4—In addition to investigating and exposing frauds in pharmaceutical preparations, the Association has also established a bureau for the collection and preservation of material regarding medical frauds and fakes—including fraudulent "cures" for tuberculosis, cancer, paralysis, locomotor ataxia, and other diseases—which are advertised to the public through false representation, leading not only to an enormous loss to the people through money paid to the swindlers without any beneficial results, but also to great loss of life and economic loss through illness owing to the victims of these frauds being deprived of proper treatment. The Association is cooperating with other organizations and with the proper authorities for the detection and punishment of these frauds and for the suppression of this most despicable kind of swindlers—those who prey upon the sick and, as a means of extorting a few dollars of blood money, take advantage of the natural desire of the sick or dying to recover health. It has been estimated by the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis that the money loss alone to the people of the United States through fake consumption cures amounts to $15,000,000 annually. Probably the loss to sufferers from cancer and other incurable diseases is as great. This robbery of the sick and helpless should no longer be tolerated in any civilized country.
5—The Association has maintained a committee for the past four years on the prevention of ophthalmia neonatorum or blindness in infants due to gonorrheal infections, a preventable cause of a large percentage of existing blindness. The United States Census for the blind and deaf taken in 1900 states that 11 percent of the total number of blind lost their sight before the completion of the first year of life, and that in 25 percent the cause of blindness was due to this form of infection. The committee of the Association has been laboring for four years past, and is still at work, endeavoring to educate the public so as to secure proper legislation for the prevention of this form of blindness.
6—Through its State and county branches, as well as through its official publications and its connection with State boards of health and other agencies, the Association has been endeavoring to educate the public on the importance of better hygienic and sanitary conditions and laws, with special reference to pure food and water; proper ventilation of houses, stores, schools, factories, and work-shops; the prevention of avoidable accidents; the development of parks and playgrounds; and the avoidance of the evils of intemperance and excesses. Realizing the importance of this work and the inadequacy of existing methods for bringing practical instruction on sanitary and hygienic questions before the public, the Association at its last annual session established a Council on Health and Public Instruction, the special function of which shall be to place before the people, through the public press, magazines, pamphlets, public meetings, addresses, moving pictures, and every other available means, the best information obtainable as to the preservation of life and the avoidance of disease. The significance and importance of this action on the part of the organized medical profession of the country can hardly be overestimated. It means that physicians as a class have taken up seriously and systematically the prevention of disease and the education of the public as to how the elimination of avoidable diseases can be secured. With the cooperation of the newspapers and of the people many preventable diseases which have for centuries claimed a fixed toll of human life can be practically eliminated, and hundreds of thousands of lives saved each year.
7—While the Association has labored for the enactment of any laws, either State or National, which were for the benefit of the public health, it stands particularly committed to legislation on three subjects. These are: (a) Adequate State laws insuring purity of the food supply, (b) such State laws as will increase the efficiency of State boards of health and enable them to combat and suppress unnecessary and controllable diseases, and (c) such legislation as will provide an adequate plan for the collection and preservation of vital statistics, in order that proper data for the study and prevention of diseases may be available. It is not to the credit of this country that in half of our States human beings are born and die without any legal recognition of the fact, that not even as much attention is paid to the birth of a human infant as is given to the birth of a race-horse, a pedigreed bull, a blooded dog, or even an Angora kitten. It is not to our credit as a civilized Nation that human beings die and are buried without any legal recognition or record being made of the cause or manner of their death. It is in no sense to our credit that in many communities diphtheria, scarlet fever, and cerebro-spinal meningitis decimate the infant population yet no one knows, nor is it anyone's business to find out, how many deaths result from these epidemics, or how many persons die from various diseases in the course of a year. Proper birth registration lies at the basis of social organization, and has been so recognized for years by European nations, yet it does not exist today in this country. Vital statistics, showing the relative health, morbidity, and mortality of various sections, are of the utmost importance, since healthfulness is recognized as one of the best business assets which a town and county or a State can possess. Yet through lack of proper laws we have today death registration alone in only half of the Nation, and practically no registration of births whatever. This disgrace on our civilization, which is the wonder and amazement of European nations, should be at once removed by the passage and enforcement of uniform laws in all of the States.
8—The following resolutions were adopted by the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, June 7, 1910:
"Resolved, That the principles of the Owen Bill, having for its object the creation of a National Department of Health, now pending in the Senate, and similar bills introduced in the House by Representatives Simmons, Creager, and Hanna, be, and are hereby, heartily approved by this Association, and the cordial thanks of the medical profession of the United States, officially represented, are hereby tendered to Senator Robert L. Owen, Irving Fisher, and their co-workers for their able and unselfish efforts to conserve and promote the most important asset of the Nation—the health and lives of its women, its children and its men—properly understood the greatest economic question now confronting our people.
"The members of this Association stand for pure food, pure drugs, better doctors, the promotion of cleaner and healthier homes, and cleaner living for individuals, for the State and for the Nation. We believe this to be held as equally true by the reputable and informed physicians of all schools or systems of practice.
"We welcome the opposition of the venal classes, long and profitably engaged in the manufacture of adulterated foods, habit-producing nostrums, and other impositions on the people, to the extent of hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and express our sympathy for the well-meaning men and women who have been misled and worked into hysterics by the monstrously wicked misrepresentations of a corrupt and noisy band of conspirators, who are being used as blind instruments to enable them to continue to defraud and debauch the American people.
"Medical science is advancing, especially on its life-saving side, with a rapidity unknown to any other branch of human knowledge. It is known of all men that our members in every community in the United States are unselfishly working day and night, instructing the people how to prevent tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and the other diseases from which physicians earn their livelihood. Therefore, we welcome and will wear as a badge of honor the slanders of these unholy interests and their hirelings."
The American Medical Association, representing as it does the medical profession of the country, stands pledged and committed to any measure which will improve the public health and preserve the lives of our people. Believing as it does that health and life is our greatest National asset, and that no nation is truly great whatever its material possessions that cannot boast of strong and healthy citizens, we ask the support and approval of the American public and of this Congress in the efforts which are being made for the preservation of human life.
[Signed] J. T. Priestly, Des Moines
F. F. Wesbrook, Minneapolis
A. R. Mitchell, Lincoln
Chas. S. Sheldon, Madison
F. R. Green, Chicago
Committee