THE ARMY AND NAVY MEDICAL RECORD
A Fraudulent Publication Whose Editorial Opinions Are for Sale
Whenever a business assumes certain proportions, subsidiary businesses spring up to cater to the needs of the larger enterprise. For some years the nostrum business has grown so large that it has furnished a more or less precarious life for many individuals who have catered to it. There are, for instance, men whose trade it is to obtain testimonials; others, claiming a long string of imposing degrees, will furnish fake reports and bogus analyses; still others issue at irregular intervals publications with high-sounding names which sell editorial indorsement to the products of concerns such as are willing to pay the price asked. “Journals” of this type have been called to the attention of our readers at different times; the New York Health Journal and the United States Health Reports come to mind at this moment. Both of these had their day and died a natural death, as all such publications must when once the public is cognizant of their true character.
TWO LETTERS
More recently the attention of The Journal has been called to a publication calling itself the Army and Navy Medical Record. A physician in the South sends a letter he has received from the Army and Navy Medical Record reading as follows:
“We have had many favorable reports reach us relative to your most excellent institution, and, as you are doubtless aware, we come in direct contact with a large number of Army and Navy and other government attachés who have sons that they desire to provide with a medical education combined with the higher course included in your up-to-date laboratory methods and the sciences incidental to clinical medical practice.
“If you will regard the proposition as confidential, we will agree to carry a one-fourth page advertisement of your university at the nominal rate of $38 per year, provided this amount is forwarded in advance at the time copy is furnished; and we will further promise to editorially indorse and recommend your school and its methods without qualification or exception. [Our italics.—Ed.] This article you should be able to use (and are authorized to do so) after publication for advertising purposes.
“We will also be able, and are willing, to furnish you with a desirable list of probable candidates from time to time.
“Kindly let us hear from you at once, if interested, and oblige,