Editorial May 17, 1913 Issue

FANCY AND FACT

Editor with contributions from W. H. Howard, James M. Cox, Archibald McLellan

Almost immediately after news came of the recent floods in Ohio and Indiana, and of the needs of those who were passing through the ordeals of wreck and famine, there appeared in many newspapers throughout the country editorials which were based upon prepared editorials sent out in bulletin form from the headquarters of the American Medical Association, as a part of the campaign of that organization to secure the establishment of a federal department of health, with a representative of the American Medical Association as a member of the President's cabinet. One of these editorials was as follows:—

In the piping times of peace a large number of the public turn from the educated physician to the fads, isms, faith, sun, magnetic and other healers. The latter are conspicuous by their absence when pestilence stalks abroad over the land, when cyclones, floods, earthquakes, and like catastrophes demand urgent, scientific, skilful action. We are reminded of this singular but obvious fact by a recent able editorial of the Journal of the American Medical Association. When the call goes forth for medical men to minister to the sick, the wounded and the dying, the plodding doctor leaves his own work and rushes into the fray, he toils day and night without receiving or expecting compensation, in behalf of suffering humanity. Has there ever occurred a calamity in which this fact has not been demonstrated?

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