In over ninety-one years of honorable service as manufacturers of medicinal preparations, the Wm. S. Merrell Company has never endeavored to advance its interests through misrepresentation.
The Wm. S. Merrell Company,
Chas. G. Merrell, Pres.
[The letter above was submitted to Dr. Allen W. Freeman, Commissioner of Health of the State of Ohio. Dr. Freeman’s comments appear below.—Ed.]
To the Editor:—The plain issue of veracity raised in the communication of the Merrell Company must be settled on the evidence, which is unfortunately too voluminous to be published in full in The Journal. Copies of the correspondence in the case have been furnished the editor, and the originals are on file in the office of the state department of health in Columbus.
1. Whether or not the photographic reproduction of a letter written on the letter head of this department, and the distribution of copies to salesmen for display to physicians, was a conscious effort on the part of the firm in question to create the impression that the letter was an official one is perhaps a matter of inference. That it did create such an impression is evidenced by the letters of inquiry received from physicians who saw it.
2. The statement that the Merrell Company refused to return the letter is perhaps erroneous. They did apparently return the original letter but not the photographic copies which had been distributed to their salesmen. On May 22 the firm wrote as follows:
“A number of physicians who are in cooperation with both state and national bureaus of venereal diseases have been using our Proteogens with marked success and there are doubtless many letters carried by our salesmen—reports from some of these physicians.”
This was interpreted to mean that the firm had no method of knowing what letters were carried by their salesmen and was not responsible for them. Whether or not this interpretation is correct is again, perhaps, a matter of opinion.
The purpose of the original communication was to make plain to those of the profession who have already seen or might subsequently see the letter referred to that the communication was the expression of an individual and not of the Department.
A. W. Freeman, Commissioner.