Doctors, Druggists & Drinkers

A past (1917-18) president of the American Medical Association, Professor Arthur Dean Bevan of the University of Chicago, recently told a subcommittee of the U. S. Senate that a great many doctors sign their liquor prescriptions in blank and sell them to druggists. That gives the druggists legal security to sell whiskey to any customer. If the doctor is called to account he dare not deny his complicity, sometimes goes to jail.

The medical economics of the situation incensed Professor Bevan: "Any rich man in Chicago today can buy a case, that is 24 pints, of whiskey at the corner drugstore for from $150 to $165 a case. That is made possible by three factors, the bootlegging druggist, the bootlegging doctor and the bootlegger. The druggist buys it at about $40 a case. One doctor or several doctors furnish the prescriptions at $3 apiece or a total of $72. That makes $112. The bootlegger and the druggist split the rest."

But in condonation he felt compelled to budget: "Of the 160,000 medical men in the United States, at least 80,000 have an annual income of $2,500 or considerably less. A doctor is allowed 400 prescriptions a year. At $3 apiece it is a terrific temptation for a man making $2,000 a year to have an opportunity to make $1,200 extra."

Dr. Bevan was of the opinion that nine out of ten liquor prescriptions are bootlegged. In Connecticut, he had heard that 99.9% of the 2,000 doctors "take out [liquor] prescription books and write prescriptions."

Was eminent Dr. Bevan a telltale, fussbudget, or ignoramus? By last week U. S. Medicine had not decided. But there was much squawking.

Dr. William Frederick Lorenz, University of Wisconsin professor of psychiatry who attended the Senate hearing with Dr. Bevan resented "any inference that dominantly the profession is engaged in bartending." Querulous members of the Chicago Medical Society, to which Dr. Bevan belongs, cried for his condemnation, if not ousting.

Stormed the Journal of the American Medical Association: "Unfortunate that physicians should testify beyond their scientific opinions. . . . Extraordinary lack of confidence in his professional brethren."

The Medical Society of the County of New York, potent in the East, and touchy, bellowed "disbelief and disapproval."

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