Photographic reproduction (greatly reduced) of an advertisement of the Burleson concern with which Ogden was connected previous to 1914, and which connection he is capitalizing in his present advertising.
The booklet gives an outline of the “Course of Instruction,” which is almost identical, word for word, with the outline given in the letter advertising the mail-order course previously referred to.
The booklet further states that “THE OGDEN METHOD has entirely eliminated the use of cautery, the ligature or any injections, in the treatment of hemorrhoids,” but that “the use of the electric current has proved to be the very correct method in such cases, as will be demonstrated at the clinic.” The booklet reiterates the statement that Ogden’s association with the Burleson and Burleson concern at Grand Rapids makes him “eminently well qualified to instruct members of the medical profession in this important branch of the medical science!”
In addition to this booklet there is a four-page advertising leaflet illustrating and describing the “Ogden Rectal Cabinet” and also the “Ogden Rectal Table and Stool.” There is also a little postcard—addressed, of course, to “H. L. Roberts”—for the physician to fill in stating that “you may enroll me as intending to attend Dr. Ogden’s Clinic in Proctology, to be held at——.” Should the recipient not fill in and mail this enrolment card he gets another form letter calling attention to the fact that the enrolment card has not been received and stating further that “available hotel facilities make it necessary to limit our enrolment to twenty students.”
Careful search fails to disclose that Dr. Willard Ealon Ogden has ever distinguished himself in the practice of the specialty in which he now wishes to instruct physicians. Equally careful search fails to show that Dr. Ogden has ever published a paper either on any proctologic subjects or on any other phase of medicine or surgery. Neither does there seem to be any evidence for the claim that Dr. Ogden “has been associated with the leading Proctologists of America.”—(From The Journal A. M. A., Feb. 4, 1922.)
“PATENTS”
Patent Laws and Patent Office Practice
The inequity of our patent laws, or possibly it would be more correct to say, of the interpretation of our patent laws, has been commented on many times in The Journal. The Journal also has had occasion to call attention to patents that have been issued for obviously unscientific and quackish devices and preparations. The cases of the preposterous gas-pipe fake “Oxydonor” and the creatinin mixture for the alleged conferring of immunity against diphtheria, pneumonia, scarlet fever, syphilis, tuberculosis, etc., are cases in point.
In a patent issued the early part of this year for the “discovery” of a method of flavoring Epsom salt, the patent office has, in fatuity, piled Pelion on Ossa. The “inventor” declares that his invention relates to a pharmaceutical preparation and a special method of treatment of the medicinal agents whereby said agent will be rendered much more efficient in character. He further avows that the “prime object” of his “invention” is to “disguise the normal taste and impart an agreeable odor or smell to salts commonly employed as a cathartic.” Parenthetically it may be said that probably not a day passes that some physician in the United States does not do substantially the same thing when writing a prescription. The “inventor” further claims that the object of his “invention” is to utilize the salts as a vehicle to carry an antiseptic and anesthetic agent whereby the salts when administered as a cathartic “will also act beneficially on the entire digestive tract” and “whereby cramped and spasmodic conditions are at once relieved with a resulting cure of flatulency, indigestion, sick and sour stomach, colic and the destruction of worms, etc.”