The publishing offices of the Army and Navy Magazine are at 606 F Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. The building at this address is known as the Baltic Building. Herbert C. Lewis is said to be a printer by trade.
The Army and Navy Medical Record seems to have been started within the last few months by Arthur G. Lewis. It does business from two addresses, the Baltic Building, Washington, D. C., and the Maple Villa Sanitarium, Hammonton, N. J. Lewis is said to have purchased the Maple Villa Sanitarium recently, but apparently his chief source of income is the Army and Navy Medical Record. He is alleged to have claimed that some medical officials of the government are interested with him in this publication but that these officials do not wish their names known. We do not blame them.
Photographic facsimile of a letter sent by the Army and Navy Medical Record to the dean of University of Michigan, Department of Medicine and Surgery, offering one hundred and twenty-five dollars’ worth of advertising space for a “nominal” thirty-eight dollars—with editorial indorsements and recommendations thrown in for good measure!
ADVERTISEMENTS AS EDITORIALS
A glance through two issues of the Army and Navy Medical Record makes perfectly plain the character of the publication. The January-February, 1913, number leads off with articles by well-known medical officers in the Army, the Navy and the Public Health Service. These have been copied from other publications. Then comes an editorial entitled “A Much Needed Dietary Reform,” devoted to the laudation of “Postum,” the widely advertised coffee substitute. Following this is an editorial on “The Philosophy of Hypnotics” in which aconitine, saline laxative and digitalin are each given a “boost.” Then comes an “original article” (save the mark!) entitled “The Physiological Pathology of Consumption.” This is by “Alfred S. Gubb, M.D., L.R.C.P., London, M.R.C.S., Eng., D.P.H., etc. etc., Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France.” Two pages are devoted to this. The “joker” appears in the third paragraphs from the end—Fellows’ Syrup of Hypophosphites. Dioxogen receives more than three pages of editorial mention under the caption “The Sterilization of Milk with Dioxogen.” Under “Another New Electrical Wonder—Magnified Sound,” the “Acousticon” is given a two-and-a-quarter page write-up. “What Wise Men Wear” is the title of a four-page article—unsigned—devoted to the laudation of suspensories in general and the “O-P-C Suspensory” in particular. Dr. H. F. Boatman, Los Angeles, contributes a short article on “A Case of Advanced Pulmonic Tuberculosis Treated with Injections of Dioradin,” while our good old friend Willard H. Morse, M.D., “F.S.Sc. (Lond.),” the champion fake-testimonial-giver of the country, writes more or less entertainingly on “Putting on a Mustard Plaster.” The article has nothing to do with mustard plasters but has a good deal to do with “Zumota,” a nostrum recommended as a substitute for the mustard plaster. These are but a few of the nostrums to which the editorial and reading pages of the Army and Navy Medical Record are devoted.
In the June-July issue, Arthur G. Lewis becomes bolder. The leading article is entitled “First Aid in the Navy,” by C. F. Stokes, Surgeon-General, United States Navy. There is nothing to indicate that this article was not contributed to the Army and Navy Medical Record by its author. As a matter of fact, it originally appeared in an official publication, the United States Naval Medical Bulletin for January, 1913, and was reprinted by Lewis without credit and without permission. Following the article by Dr. Stokes is another, unsigned, entitled “The Passing of ‘The Pie Habit.’” This describes the surprise of the students of Harvard University at being served breakfast cereals instead of pie at their noonday meal and suggests that “Shredded Wheat Biscuits” make a “delicious dessert.” A two-and-a-half page article on the “Danger of Corrosive Sublimate in Vaginal Douche” is reprinted from the Lancet-Clinic of September, 1903. The reason for resurrecting this ten-year-old article becomes apparent before one gets half through it. It deals not so much with the danger of corrosive sublimate as with the marvelous—alleged—properties of Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder. Dr. Claude C. Keeler, Denver, has a three-page article on the “Medical Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis.” The “medical treatment” referred to is Waterbury’s Compound. An editorial entitled “One Notch Ahead of Morphin” is devoted to that vicious morphin solution sold under the proprietary name “Papine.” Another on “The Treatment of Catarrh by Palliatives and Curatives” deals with a widely advertised “patent medicine,” “Kondon’s Catarrhal Jelly.” What appears to be a contributed article by Charles Wardell Stiles of the United States Public Health Service on “Country Schools and Rural Sanitation” has really been “lifted” from an official publication without credit and, needless to say, without Dr. Stiles’ permission.
But medicinal preparations are not the only things to which the Army and Navy Medical Record gives editorial indorsement. All advertising matter, apparently, is grist to its mill. Sandwiched in between articles on “Public Health Administrations” and “Important Army Medical Lectures” is a dissertation on “The Millennium of Shirt Construction,” in which are sung the virtues of the tailless shirt! A little farther along the Hawaiian pineapple is extolled, while the last pages of the issue are devoted to various banking concerns.
In addition to the advertisements appearing throughout the reading and editorial pages of these two issues of the Army and Navy Medical Record, there are a number of display advertisements. There is no reason to suppose, at least in the majority of cases, that the advertisers had the slightest reason to suspect the nature of the Army and Navy Medical Record. Several pages are devoted to financial advertisements, there being more than forty banks that have “fallen for” the wiles of Arthur G. Lewis. In view of the letters received by the deans of medical colleges and other educational institutions, the display advertisements of schools and colleges have a special interest to physicians. Schools for girls, polytechnics, colleges of music, veterinary, dental and medical schools—all are to be found in this cosmopolitan publication.
Among the therapeutic products advertised—in the advertising pages—are: