To the Editor:—What information can you give me regarding Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D., 104 East Fortieth Street, New York, and the therapeutic value of the “Proteal Therapy” that he has originated?
M. D. Baker, M.D., San Jose, Calif.
The above letters are selected from many received on the subject. Henry Smith Williams is better known in the journalistic world than in the field of scientific medicine. He was graduated by the Chicago Medical College in 1884. In the thirteen issues of medical directories of the United States that have been published during the past thirty years Dr. Williams’ name does not appear—except for the issues of 1890 and 1893—until the 1914 edition. So far as we have been able to find, Dr. Williams had not until 1915 contributed any articles to medical journals. The catalog of the Surgeon General’s Library contains no reference to any articles of Dr. Williams except those that have appeared in popular magazines. The volumes of the Index Medicus from 1907 until 1914, inclusive, also contain no references to any articles by him in medical journals. The Journal‘s author index to current medical literature from 1900 to 1914, inclusive, fails to record any articles by Dr. Williams in medical journals. Dr. Williams’ articles, however, in popular magazines have been voluminous and numerous. Sometimes his articles have been under his own name and sometimes under the nom de plume, “Stoddard Goodhue, M.D.” Under the latter name the Cosmopolitan published articles on “Adding Years to Your Life,” “Battle of the Microbes,” “Do You Choose Your Children?” and “What is the Matter With Your Brain?” Under his own name articles have appeared in popular magazines on such subjects as “Burbank’s Way with Flowers,” “Every Woman Her Own Burbank,” “Why Not Live Forever?” “Science of Breeding Kings,” “New Cancer Treatment” and “New Hope for Rheumatism Sufferers.” In addition, Dr. Williams has published books on such subjects as “History of the Art of Writing,” “Historians’ History of the World,” “Story of Nineteenth Century Science,” “Luther Burbank,” “Twilight Sleep” and others. The Goodhue Company of New York City, which publishes some of Dr. Williams’ books has, we understand, for its president, Dr. Henry Smith Williams, for its vice president, Dr. Williams’ wife, and for its secretary-treasurer, Dr. Williams’ daughter.
Readers of The Journal will remember the publicity given in 1915 and 1916 to an alleged treatment for cancer, sometimes called the “Horowitz-Beebe Autolysin Treatment.” The method was heralded widely both in a certain portion of the medical press and in popular magazines and newspapers. A popular article by Henry Smith Williams on “The New Cancer Treatment” appeared in the Illustrated World for October, 1915, with pictures of Dr. Horowitz, Dr. Beebe, etc. A month or two later, physicians received, gratis, from the Goodhue Company a neatly bound little book on “Alcohol Hygiene and Legislation,” by E. H. Williams, M.D. (brother of Henry Smith Williams). Enclosed with it was a letter from the Goodhue Company asking physicians to accept the book. The body of the letter was devoted to calling the attention of physicians to an “important work” by Dr. Henry Smith Williams on “The Autolysin Treatment of Cancer” that the Goodhue Company was publishing. With the letter, there was a small advertising pamphlet “Issued by the Autolysin Laboratory” and advertising that product. In addition, the last thirteen pages of the book on “Alcohol Hygiene” contained advertisements of the Goodhue Company’s publications with particular emphasis (four pages of it) on the “Autolysin Treatment of Cancer,” by Henry Smith Williams.
In May, 1917, physicians in the West received a letter from the “Ellison-White Chautauqua System” informing them that Dr. Henry Smith Williams was to lecture at “your Chautauqua” and reminding them that “he has recently issued two volumes, ‘The Autolysin Treatment of Cancer’ which he believes will be his greatest contribution to medical science.” The present “Proteal” treatment appears to be a modification of the “Autolysin” treatment. Dr. Williams, in attempting to justify the use of his “Proteal” in tuberculosis, cancer, rheumatism, etc., takes advantage of certain investigations bearing on the nonspecific reactions resulting from the parental injection of foreign proteins. So far as we can discover, there is no scientific evidence to indicate that the “Proteal” treatment expounded by Williams is of value in the treatment of cancer, tuberculosis or the other numerous diseases for which the “Proteals” are recommended.
It is a question whether such articles as those on “The Proteal Treatment of Cancer,” “New Hope for Rheumatism Sufferers,” etc., published in popular magazines or newspapers serve any useful public purpose. May they not, on the contrary, by raising false hopes, cause much mental suffering and do scientific medicine great harm?—(From The Journal A. M. A., July 6, 1918.)
PROTEOGENS
Commercial Therapeutics [P]
A report of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry that appears elsewhere[253] in this book deals with another attempt to foist on our profession a series of essentially secret preparations whose therapeutic value has not been scientifically demonstrated. Grotesquely extravagant claims are advanced as to the therapeutic potency and range of action of substances of whose nature and effects we have no trustworthy information. Physicians are advised to use—and many undoubtedly are using—these alleged remedies in the treatment of diseases in which delay in the proper kind of treatment may be of the greatest danger to the patient. As stated, there is available no reliable information regarding the effects of these substances when they are introduced in the human body. They may have no effect whatever, or they may produce more or less direct injury; in either case, there is the chance that damage, even irreparable to the patient, may result because rational treatment is withheld.