Very truly yours,
L. J. Genella, M.D., New Orleans, La.
The letter which our correspondent encloses is on the stationery of the Charlotte Medical Journal and signed by the editor of that journal. Here it is:
“My Dear Doctor Genella:—I have just looked over an article of yours published in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal entitled ‘Clinical Studies in Pituitary Irritation, with Report of Case.’ I would be very glad indeed to have you send me a manuscript or article for the Charlotte Medical Journal. Your style of writing is very attractive.
“If you will send me an article for the journal, I will be glad to publish same and will place your name on my complimentary mailing list. Under separate cover I am sending you a copy of the journal.
“Of course I will expect the article to be typewritten.”
Whether or not this is a modification of the “abstract” scheme or an attempt to boost the circulation of the Charlotte Medical Journal are questions we shall not attempt to answer. As to the questions propounded by our correspondent, they have been answered many times in these pages. We turn to one of the recent copies of the Charlotte Medical Journal and examine its advertising pages. On one of the first we find Anasarcin, a product whose fraudulent character was described at some length in The Journal, May 4 and 11, 1907. On another page we find Tongaline, which has also come in for a fair share of attention (see The Journal, Sept. 23, 1906, and May 10, 1913). A little farther over we find a half-page advertisement of Bannerman’s Intravenous Solution, a nostrum first exploited as a “consumption cure” and now as a cure-all (see The Journal, May 31, 1913). Cactina Pillets (see The Journal, March 12, 1910), Hagee’s Cordial of the Extract of Cod-Liver Oil (see The Journal, Oct. 13, 1906), Burnham’s Soluble Iodin (see The Journal, March 28, 1908), Ecthol (see The Journal, March 13, 1909), Bromidia (see The Journal, April 21, 1906), Papine (see The Journal, April 29, 1911), Phenalgine—two advertisements (see The Journal, Jan. 13, and 27, 1906, and Jan. 27, 1912) and Sal Hepatica (see The Journal, March 26, 1910) are some more products which have attained unenviable notoriety but found a safe haven in the advertising pages of the Charlotte Medical Journal. Neither must we fail to refer to the advertisement of Duffy’s Malt Whiskey (see The Journal, Nov. 23, 1912), which looks thoroughly at home.
Does our correspondent—in fact, does any conscientious physician having the interest of scientific medicine at heart—want to do anything that will tend to perpetuate therapeutic fraud? Subscribing for or contributing to medical journals whose income is largely derived from nostrums that are as vicious as many of the “patent medicines” advertised in the daily press hampers the medical profession in its fight for honesty in therapeutics and renders largely abortive its fight against fraudulent “patent medicines.” So long as the accredited organs of the medical profession tolerate fraudulent “ethical proprietaries” in their advertising pages, just so long will the protests of physicians against the swindling advertisements of “patent medicines” in the daily press fall largely on deaf ears—and justly so.—(From The Journal A. M. A., Oct. 11, 1913.)
A Physician Places the Responsibility for Fraudulent Advertising Where It Belongs
“To the Editor:—The Journal has had much to say in recent years regarding the ethics, or lack of same, in advertising matter exploited by its contemporaries. It has been criticized by many for the stringency of its attack; it has been criticized by very few because it did not go far enough. Is it not about time to get to the root of the matter?