“Dear Friend:—Permit me to call your attention to the fact that Dr. A. E. Erling, the eminent specialist, after many years of travel, practice and medical research, has given up his extensive road practice and severed his connection with the several medical institutes which have heretofore occupied considerable of his attention ... Dr. Erling’s success in the treatment of all CHRONIC DISEASES is truly remarkable. Nervousness, all BLOOD DISEASES, RHEUMATISM, DISEASES PECULIAR TO WOMEN, CATARRH, DEAFNESS, CHRONIC CONSTIPATION ... APPENDICITIS ... PILES, STOMACH TROUBLES, PARTIAL PARALYSIS, etc., give way as if by magic under his skillful method of treatment ... Understand please, that Dr. Erling DOES NOT ACCEPT A CASE FOR TREATMENT unless he can PROMISE A SPEEDY AND POSITIVELY PERMANENT CURE.”
The Journal also has in its files advertisements (vintage of 1915), from some Wisconsin country newspapers, which notify the afflicted that “Drs. Erling and Karass, the expert German Specialists,” could be seen in their offices in the “Schlegel Hotel,” the “Schlitz Hotel,” etc., as the case might be. Whether one of these “German Specialists” was Dr. Arnold E. Erling, The Journal does not know. Official medical records fail to show, at least, that there is any other Erling in the state of Wisconsin.
W. W. Fritz, M.D., Philadelphia.—Another of the “Censors.” This presumably is W. Wallace Fritz, M.D., D.D.S., N.D., D.O., D.C., who was the “Dean” of the “American College of Neuropathy,” and “Professor of Neuropathy” at the same institution. According to newspaper reports published when the “dean” of the American College of Neuropathy was called into court to testify regarding the “school,” Fritz admitted that when he became dean of this “college,” the “college” had three students and thirty “Faculty Members”! Fritz, it should be mentioned in passing, is a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society and by virtue of this membership he has qualified as a Fellow of the American Medical Association! Recently Fritz’s name appeared in connection with the formation of a new organization, founded, it appears, for the laudable purpose of fighting the “Medical Trust.” Fritz, according to the newspaper reports, is treasurer of this new organization, which has adopted the inspiring title, “Constitutional Liberty League of America” and seems to be a later edition of the mushroom “National League for Medical Freedom.” Quoting from the newspaper report:
“Dr. W. Wallace Fritz, a member of the American Medical Association, created a profound impression when he said that all health laws were written by agents of, or members of, the American Medical Association, and that this organization was at once the most powerful and the most baneful of all the American Trusts. Dr. Fritz then went on to say: ‘Most of the drugs administered are worthless. Most of the doctors who prescribe them are incompetent, but both the injurious drug and the ignorant prescriber are protected, in and out of court, by the American Medical Association, which trust is now raising a vast fund with which to drive all drugless healers out of the profession. Medicine is the camouflage used to conceal the most alert, the most rapacious and the least patriotic of all the trusts milking the American people. The tyranny of the Medical Trust is unbelievable. It is also un-American.’ ”
The Philadelphia Sunday Transcript of May 4, 1919, had a five column article under the name of W. Wallace Fritz. It is a most vituperative affair, and reeks with fire and brimstone. It is directed chiefly against the American Medical Association, and physicians are dubbed “Prescription Writing Drug Peddlers Who Prosper Through Monopolistic Laws Rather than by the Practice of an Exact Science.” In the course of this diatribe we read:
“The members of the American Medical Association are manifesting an unwarranted interest in the dear people, who, in their assumption, need quinin and mercurial guardian; who under this class legislation confines us to this monopoly of the big and little pill, is trying by hook and crook to shut out the natural and rational methods of cure which are driving the drug monopoly from the face of the earth. Diagnosis and consultation consist in four or five medical doctors, whose faces denote death, sitting around a sick man and guessing what ails him. After that has been performed they guess at what will cure him, and that is generally a sure sign the undertaker will follow.”
C. O. Linder, M.D., Spokane, Wash.—This gentleman (another “Censor”), seems to be an osteopath, who some years ago was “Assistant Secretary” of the “Washington’s Physicians’ Association,” founded apparently by rebels within the osteopathic ranks who denounced the Washington Osteopathic Association as a “professional trust”! Linder apparently claims graduation in 1905 from the “Thompsonian Medical College” of Allentown, Pa. The following item from the American Medical Directory regarding this school is of interest:
“Thompsonian Medical College, Allentown. Organized in 1904. Fraudulent. No evidence to show classes were ever held.”
A. H. Flower, M.D., Boston.—Still another “Censor.” Flower, according to the notice that appears in Polk’s Directory for 1917, claims graduation in 1888 from the “American Health College” of Cincinnati, and in 1894 from the “American Health University” of Chicago. Quoting again from the American Medical Directory, here is what we find regarding the former “college”:
“American Health College, Cincinnati. Organized in 1874 and re-organized in 1876. Conducted by a Dr. Campbell who originated and copyrighted the so-called ‘Vitapathic System,’ Fraudulent. Extinct about 1888.”