Meantime, the public itself has had a somewhat similar awakening. The progress of the profession has necessarily spread more or less to the laymen. All sorts of educational agencies have been working to convince the public that individual and national health is too precious an asset to be entrusted to any quack who may spell his praise in printer’s ink. Legislators have passed food, drug, and antinarcotic laws which have aroused interest and discussion. Even the “drugless cults” have somewhat offset their harm by causing the public to reflect that drugging is not a panacea for all ills. All this has not been without effect. The public is in a receptive mood; it is not convinced, but wishes to learn. Legislators are prepared to follow public opinion. The purveyors of patent medicines are watching events.
What, under these conditions, should be the attitude of the medical profession? Plainly, it should continue to be what it always has been: to stand aggressively for the protection of the public health, without any compromise. In doing so, it is true, physicians will expose themselves to the imputation of selfish motives. Selfishly commercial minds cannot or will not understand the unselfish ideals of a profession—that is their loss. Physicians, however, must be careful not to give a semblance of reason to the charge; for that would diminish the effect of their attitude. They must confine themselves to informing the public of the facts; and to guarding the health of the public at large, and of their own patients in particular.
No one, in a free country, can force a diseased individual to seek effective treatment or prevent him from using an ineffective treatment, unless his disease imperils the health of others. At that point, and not before, the government can and should take personal measures. However, it is a well recognized function of the government to protect individuals against their own ignorance. It does this when it forces the child to go to school; it does this when it places the swindler in jail.
On exactly the same principle, the government has the right and the duty to protect the uninformed public against the flagrant evil of the patent medicine traffic—and the patent medicine traffic as now carried on is a flagrant evil and series of evils. The government should protect the public against advertisements that are framed to suggest or create imaginary ailments, with their attendant miseries; it should protect the public against being deluded by false promises of cure; against the specious relief that merely hides the disease and blinds the patient to its dangers; against drugs that may and do work positive harm; against the veil of mystery that makes these abuses possible.
The individual layman cannot protect himself against these dangers, and has a right to expect that the government will prohibit the indiscriminate sale of any medicine that may be harmful to him. He has a right to expect, when the government permits the sale of a patent medicine, that the medicine will do him no harm; just as he has a right to expect that any physician whom the government permits to practice, should be competent.
These are some of the reasons why physicians oppose patent medicines as they are now exploited; and for these reasons, physicians should take an absolutely uncompromising attitude, and use every opportunity to educate the public. The patent medicine interests naturally try to obscure the issue. By the art in which they are so skilful, they aim to suggest to the public that physicians are opposed to patent medicines, in order to drive patients to their offices. They “forget” to mention that physicians have never conducted a “campaign” against really efficient preventive public-health measures, no matter how many prospective patients were involved. No physician has ever refused to give diphtheria antitoxin because this would diminish the number of his visits. A short memory is a very convenient asset for self-interested persons. It is not so convenient for the public—but it is all too frequent. Physicians must, therefore, make it plain that their stand is not against patent medicines, but for the protection of the health of the public.—(From The Journal A. M. A., March 4, 1916.)
DRUG THERAPY: THE FALLIBILITY OF TEXTBOOKS
Until very recently, we were compelled to acknowledge that little, if any, progress was being made in internal medicine so far as drug therapy was concerned. Everybody knows of the progress made in other branches—in bacteriology, in pathology, in biologic chemistry, in surgery, in etiology and in application of technical methods to diagnosis. Recently, however, pharmacologic research and the application of scientific methods in the study of the physiologic action of drugs are resulting in definite, positive progress. An important lesson, incidentally learned through this scientific investigation, is the fallibility of the drug therapy described in textbooks. The explanation is, of course, that many of these textbooks are mere compilations containing false statements, unproved theories, and unverified clinical evidence representing the guesswork of ancient uncritical observers. Many drugs have been, and still are, vaunted in textbooks as valuable in a variety of conditions, whereas scientific investigation and controlled clinical observation have proved them to be totally worthless; others are proving to be of value in an extremely limited number of conditions. The sooner writers of textbooks realize this fact and enter into the spirit of the new era, the better for the public and for scientific medicine.—(Editorial from The Journal A. M. A., May 27, 1916.)