“To the Editor:—The statements made in the advertisement of the Kellam Hospital in the October number of the Medical Times are so out of the ordinary that I ask you to tell us something if you can of their institution and its methods of cure. Can such things as are stated in this advertisement be true? ‘Physicians Treated Free?’ ‘Endorsed by the Senate and Legislature of Virginia?’ What can all this mean to the sufferer from cancer? If true, let the whole world of sufferers know the glorious news.”
Collier’s paid its respects to the Kellam concern some time ago and we cannot do better than quote from its pages. Thus:
Fig. 2.—One way of drumming up trade in the “cancer cure” business! The Kellam Hospital sends letters like this to the postmasters of small towns asking these government officials to furnish it with what, in the parlance of quackery, is known as a “sucker list.” A delightful business, isn’t it? And this, gentlemen of the “Board of Contributing Editors,” is the sort of thing to which you are lending your influence and good names!
“Grief is the portion of the Kellam Cancer Hospital, of Richmond, Virginia, because in these editorials it has been grouped with other exemplars of the Great American Fraud. It offers the invariable and hollow mockery of testimonials and endorsements, which, as has been repeatedly shown, can be wheedled, browbeaten or bribed out of the victims of any form of quackery. It, of course, courts the fullest investigation, and desires that we send a representative to investigate whether its claims are not well founded. Unsuspected by the Messrs. Kellam, our representative has already investigated their claims, notably their statement that they are endorsed by the Legislature of the State of Virginia. Upon request for a copy of the endorsement they forwarded a weak subterfuge, and finally, on pressure, admitted that they could not produce the proof they had boasted. For their further consideration we present a brief parallel:
| FROM THE KELLAM CIRCULAR | FROM A KELLAM LETTER | |
| The Cancer is removed without the use of the knife or X-Ray ... No roots or fibers left; hence it can not return. | We do not claim to “cure them all.” We go further, and on our part, we agree to treat, free of charge, any patient who suffers a recurrence after having been treated by our method. |
“The italics are our own, but we cheerfully present them for elucidation to the Kellam Hospital. A little careful thought devoted to reconciling the irreconcilable may help them to forget their woe. Meanwhile, they make themselves out worse than they really are by pretending to withhold from the bitter need of humanity a true, non-surgical cure for cancer. If this were true; if, indeed, they had solved the problem which has baffled the greatest minds of modern science; if, having a genuine cure for the dreadful ailment which claims its increasing thousands of tortured victims yearly, they secrete their discovery for the sake of a few paltry dollars, then they are as cold-hearted as the sailors who pass within fair hail of the naked island on which some shipwrecked crew is starving, and keep their stony eyes on the compass. They have not even the excuse of the fanatical among the Christian Scientists who, denying the existence of pain, refuse to take measures to ease the cancer victim’s suffering even at the last. Human nature is seldom so callous.”
As for the Medical Times: This publication for years contained comparatively little advertising. Then it came into the hands of Romaine Pierson, who also owns the Practical Druggist. Mr. Pierson is not a physician and to him the medical profession is but a commercial problem. He is publishing a medical journal for the money there is in it, and for this he is not to be censured. Questions of advertising policy, in such circumstances, are determined on a commercial basis. When an advertising contract is submitted, for a product that physicians would know to be fraudulent, the question that arises is, “Can it be put over?” Manifestly, a medical journal published purely as a business venture would not dare long to fly in the face of the opinions of those from whom it received its support—its subscribers and contributors. If our correspondents will go through the advertising columns of the Medical Times they will find many, many other frauds, less cruel perhaps than the Kellam advertisement, but no less disreputable or discreditable to the medical profession.
After all is said and done, it is enlightened public opinion that is causing publishers of lay magazines and newspapers to eliminate fraudulent “patent medicine” and quack advertisements. Until the medical profession takes an equally enlightened stand, physicians may expect to be afflicted with such commercial medical journals as the Medical Times, the International Journal of Surgery, the American Journal of Surgery, American Medicine, and several other papers that are published primarily in the interest of the advertiser. When such journals as these find they cannot get a circulation among physicians so long as they carry advertisements similar to many now appearing in their pages, these advertisements will be eliminated, but not before. Many physicians are receiving such journals at a nominal price or, as one of our correspondents notes, free. The physician who permits such journals to come to his office must share with the paid subscribers the responsibility for the low standard of medical journalism.—(From the Journal A. M. A., Oct. 18, 1913.)