The author has in mind one particular instance, the accuracy of which he can vouch for because he was interested in the preparation and sale of the remedy. A certain hypodermatic treatment was placed on the medical market “for the use of physicians only.” To satisfy the ethical gentlemen the formula was given, and it was given correctly. Nothing, however, was said about the method of preservation. This was an important item as the remedy consisted of a combination of animal tissues and fluids which would decompose quickly, and if injected into the human system would work havoc. To keep it in condition for use, with its curative properties intact, it was necessary to put it through a preservative process in the course of which various chemicals and other substances were added. Nothing was said in the formula about this feature, nor did the strictly ethical physicians who used it make any enquiry about it.
Common sense, to say nothing about medical training, should have told them that a remedy prepared after the formula as stated must decompose rapidly unless some preservative process was employed, but a little thing like this did not seem to bother them. They just simply glanced at the formula, wondered they had not thought of it themselves, and jabbed it into their patients according to directions.
What assurance did they have that, if the remedy was not properly preserved it would not injure, and perhaps kill the people upon whom it was used? What assurance did they have that, if the remedy had been put through a preservative process, it did not contain some substance which would be equally injurious? None whatever. Their actions were equivalent to saying they didn’t care.
This, to the careful, conscientious physician, would seem like coming close to the danger mark, and so it was. To speak plainly it was little short of criminal carelessness, and yet these practitioners were all thoroughly ethical. The only possible excuse for them is to say they thought they knew, but this is actually no excuse at all as, under their obligation it was their duty to know beyond doubt what they were using.
As Dr. Lydston asks in the opening chapter, “Why not be honest” about this publicity matter, and, he might well have added, all the other features of modern medical practice as well. There is no excuse for honest practitioners leaving the use of the public press to quacks and fakirs—and the few really good physicians who are smart enough to take advantage of it while at the same time “pulling the wool over the eyes” of their professional brethren.
Such tactics as now prevail, cloaked under the guise of ethics, are unfair to the young medic. They keep him from doing the very thing which the self-appointed Lord High Apostles of Ethics are doing, and waxing rich and famous thereby.
CHAPTER IV
LAWFUL TO ADVERTISE
Just who put forth the dictum that it is unlawful, unprofessional, unethical, for a physician to advertise is unknown. It was probably some old codger of antiquarian ideas. At any rate the rule—and it is a rule—is so old it reeks with decay. But, among progressive physicians, it is fast coming to be recognized as a rule which is “more honored in the breach than in the observance.”
Other professional men who were once held in bonds of the same nature are breaking away. We find in the public press the cards of attorneys, architects and civil engineers, all callings which are legitimately dignified with the name of “professions.” No exception is taken to these men making their talents known, although at one time—and it is only a few years ago—they were held in ethical bonds just as strong and binding as those with which the medical practitioner is now enchained.