Article March 17, 1917 Issue

The Record, being fairly wise in its day and generation,...

The Record

The Record, being fairly wise in its day and generation, has not lavishly used the publicity stuff sent out by various "benevolent" institutes, societies, associations, and clubs. We speak now of those much advertised associations that seek to advise the public in regard to its health, or that seek to prevent disease, or that desire to shoot us all full of serums and germs before we catch something. Somehow we always have had a mean suspicion that most of these associations were conducted largely for the benefit of certain doctors who seek a medical monopoly in this country. We are glad to discover our suspicions verified by a recent yellow circular from the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis.

This circular says that there is a national movement on foot to institute a National Medical Examination day for every person, sick or well. It is planned that at least once a year every person in this country be examined by a doctor, who will in nine cases out of ten find something wrong with the subject; and who better could be found to rectify the ailment than the examining doctor? The circular naively says: "Out of the thousands who have been examined and found to be impaired, only 10 per cent imagined there was anything wrong with them; the remaining 90 per cent supposed themselves perfectly well."

So once a year it is proposed to herd the people of this nation together for the members of the Medical Association to go over. ... The cold fact is, that the medical schools of this country have been turning out tens of thousands of doctors for whom there were no patients. It has been increasingly difficult for a doctor to make a living from the normal supply of patients; so the start was made when by law school children were vaccinated, their tonsils excavated, their glands side-swiped, their ears drilled out, and their blessed little tummies thoroughly made over.

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