“Granting that the newspaper man accepts the advertisements through ignorance of the facts concerning their possibilities for evil, what can be offered in defense of the medical editor who accepts advertising matter equally pernicious in its influence?
“Indeed, it is not so many years since many of the so-called ethical medical journals carried the ads of some of the most notorious quacks this country has ever known.
“Doubtless there are few, if any, who do so at the present time, but, on the other hand, there are only a few who do not advertise unethical institutions, and questionable proprietary medicines. As a matter of fact some of the most widely advertised patent medicines of today were formerly advertised as ethical proprietaries in medical periodicals, the great majority of which are still serving as a sort of preparatory school for advertisements that will presently appear in the lay press.
“What shall be offered in defense of the medical publication which continues to publish the advertising matter of hundreds of proprietaries which the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association has shown to be either generally worthless or an out and out fake?
“Can the medical editor plead ignorance? Hardly. To do so would be to admit utter incapacity. There is only one inference to be drawn; the publication needs the money and is not overparticular regarding its source.
“There is a remedy, however, a remedy absolutely certain in its results. If every physician in the United States for a period of three months would positively refuse to receive at his desk a medical journal containing questionable advertising, this blotch on medical journalism could be erased.
“It is true that many of them would sink, never to rise again, but the profession would be better off without those whose existence depends upon ‘phoney’ advertising. There are, unfortunately, several American journals whose reading pages are well and carefully edited and a credit to medical literature, whose advertising pages carry such undesirable matter that the educated physician can only feel a sense of disgust.
“Such journals could very well succeed on the quality of their reading matter and undoubtedly would increase their circulation enough to more than offset the loss in advertising.”—(From The Journal A. M. A., May 29, 1915.)