It may be news to Lippincott’s to learn that there are a score and more of newspapers and magazines that are accepting the findings of the American Medical Association on medical frauds and rejecting advertisements of such frauds. There are many newspapers that send us the medical advertising “copy” submitted to them and ask for an opinion on it. When that opinion is unfavorable, these papers refuse such advertisements. This is being done daily. We have yet to hear of any “patent medicine” faker or quack even threatening to bring suit because his advertisements have been rejected.
The advertising department of Lippincott’s may therefore take heart. When an advertisement of an outrageous fake like the Oxydonor is submitted to it, instead of accepting the money for it, meantime muttering an inaudible protest at the unfortunate position in which it has been placed, it may look the fraud in the eye and say Boo! The faker will not bite.
Before leaving the subject, we are constrained to refer to Lippincott’s medical publication, the Annals of Surgery. We begin to realize now why that journal offers a welcome haven to such products as Sal Hepatica, Bromidia, Papine, Gray’s Glycerin Tonic, Fellows’ Syrup of Hypophosphites, et al. Presumably the same “custom” obtains in the acceptance of advertising for the Annals of Surgery as for Lippincott’s, namely that the Lippincott Company does “not verify the claims of advertisers.” Possibly the Annals of Surgery is afraid that, should it reject the Sal Hepatica advertisement, for instance, it might he haled into court! Let us trust, for their peace of mind, that the publishers of the Annals of Surgery do not receive an advertisement from Old Doc Hartman for a full page display of Peruna. The mental anguish they would undergo in reluctantly accepting this advertisement—under the fear that Hartman would “claim damages” if it were rejected—is painful to contemplate.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Feb. 7, 1914.)
MEDICAL JOURNAL ADVERTISING
And Methods of Obtaining Paid-Up Subscribers
Time was when the postal authorities were lenient with publishers. The names of individuals who had ever subscribed for publications of a certain class were carried on the books indefinitely, whether they paid their subscriptions or not. This permitted a padding of the circulation figures. Of late years, however, the postoffice department requires publishers to have bona-fide paid-up subscriptions if they wish their publications to be carried at the low second-class rate. Certain medical journals have been hard put to it to get a circulation that would be at all attractive to the advertisers, on whose money they depend for continued existence.
Many and various have been the schemes devised whereby the dwindled circulation might be “boosted.” Subscriptions could not be given away because the postal laws forbade it. One ingenious method of obviating this difficulty is worked in this fashion: Dr. John Doe writes an article that appears in a reputable medical journal. A few days after its appearance, Dr. Doe receives a letter from the editor and publisher of a medical journal that is in need of a subscription list. He is told that the editor has read his article with much interest and would appreciate receiving from Dr. Doe a brief abstract of it. He does not expect the doctor to go to the trouble of making this abstract for nothing. He will, therefore, on receipt of the abstract credit Dr. Doe with three years’ subscription for himself or for one year for himself and one year for each of any other two doctors he may name. For every doctor that bites on this scheme the publisher increases his circulation by three copies and the federal officials are assured that they are paid-up subscriptions—not paid for in cash, it is true, but in “abstracts.”
All of this preliminary to a letter recently received:
To the Editor:—Enclosed find letter which speaks for itself. Now what I should like to know from you is the following: Is the Charlotte Medical Journal all it should be? Should a doctor contribute to a journal—thereby adding to its prestige and circulation—that carries questionable matter in the advertising pages? If the above journal is off color, does that act as a bar for good men to contribute?