Last week The Journal published a letter received by a physician in Milwaukee from a firm of lawyers representing the Farbwerke-Hoechst Company. In this communication the physician was threatened with suit if he published further unfavorable reports regarding that firm’s preparation. Quoting from the attorney’s letter:
“Mr. Metz directs us to inform you that the publication of this article and the statements therein were seriously damaging to the Farbwerke-Hoechst Company, and directs us to say further to you that he and the corporation will hold you personally responsible for any repetition, oral or written, of the same or of similar statements to the same effect.”
We were under the impression that the time had passed when a proprietary medicine manufacturer would presume to threaten a physician for making an honest report of his results with any therapeutic agent. Such condition did exist once, before the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry undertook its work. Now comes Mr. Metz to revive this relic of an historic but infamous period in the history of American proprietary medicine manufacturing. Even Mr. Vanderbilt regretted that he ever said “The public be d——.” One of the elementary principles in the practice of medicine is that the individual physician shall let others know his results, whether good or bad, in any line of treatment. It is by such interchange of knowledge and experience that progress in medicine is possible. Yet Mr. Metz would interfere with the diffusion of such knowledge and experience when it applies to proprietary medicines. His legal threat against Dr. Sargent is “terrorism” applied to the medical profession.—(Editorial from The Journal A. M. A., June 8, 1918.)
Rabbit-Foot Therapy
Few but ignorant darkies have any great faith in the therapeutic efficacy of the left hind foot of a rabbit caught in the churchyard in the dark of the moon. In the light of modern therapeutics one is tempted to believe, however, that had some one person or firm an exclusive proprietary right to this particular brand of rabbits’ feet, there would be many intelligent people—and not all of them laymen—ready to swear by rabbits’ foot therapy. In medical journals (whose advertising pages set forth the virtues of the pedal extremities of Lepus sylvaticus) many solemnly scientific articles would probably appear relating the success that the writers had had with this form of therapy in the treatment of some distressing stubborn conditions that had failed to respond to all previous efforts. Is it ubiquity that has saved the homely cotton-tail from being a therapeutic hero?—(Editorial from The Journal A. M. A., Sept. 29, 1917.)
Secret Remedies and the Principles of Ethics
Many hundreds, possibly thousands, of inquiries are received each year by The Journal from physicians asking for information on, or an opinion of certain proprietary remedies. In many instances the preparations in question are essentially secret in composition, although advertised to the profession under a fair-seeming exterior of apparent frankness. There are on the market today—and used by members of the American Medical Association—dozens, yes scores, of widely advertised proprietaries that are, to all intents and purposes, secret. The physicians who prescribe them do not know and cannot know what they are giving their patients. On this point Section 6 of Chapter II of the Principles of Medical Ethics of the American Medical Association says:
“... it is ... unethical to prescribe or dispense secret medicines or other secret remedial agents, or manufacture or promote their use in any way.”
The inherent and basic reasonableness of the various requirements of the Principles of Medical Ethics needs no exposition or defense. A large number of proprietary remedies which at present degrade medicine would be wiped out of existence or, at any rate, go over to the “patent medicine” class, where they belong, if physicians would live up to Section 6, Chapter II, of the Principles.—(Editorial from The Journal A. M. A., Sept. 27, 1919.)