In Atlantic City

Five million tons of rain fell on Atlantic City, the Weather Bureau calculated, the first day that the American and Canadian Medical Associations met there last week in joint convention. Thereafter the weather was clear and brisk, and the doctors, looking prosperous and vigorous, buckled down to the convention business of protecting their profession from laymen, of protecting laymen from quacks, of learning many a fact about disease. Some 300 men reported their last year's research. Dr. Emanuel Libman delivered the Billings Lecture (TIME, June 10). Study of 236 scientific and 225 commercial exhibits absorbed all the doctors' remaining hours.

The doctors viewed with curiosity stocky little Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, heard him tell his stock story about the birth of the Dionne quintuplets, listened to his invitation to go touring in Canada, gave him special commendation for a scientific exhibit in which he displayed an early photograph of one of the Dionne girls cradled in a nurse's hand, another recent photograph of the five girls, pictures of their home and hospital, charts of the foods they ate.

Dr. James Somerville McLester of Birmingham, ingoing A. M. A. president and crack dietary expert, drew respectful attention when he declared: "The American people are acutely food conscious and will eat anything they are told is healthful. The cheaper cereals can be used as the mainstay of the diet, provided properly selected supplementary foods, such as liver and lettuce, are added in suitable amounts. Because of its high supplementary value in a diet of cereals as well as of other foods, a place must be provided in the household budget for definite quantities of milk and milk products. Even with today's high prevailing prices, milk is still a bargain in food values. ... It is difficult to estimate how many persons in this country are so poor they are unable to purchase the food necessary to keep them in health. . . . But something like 20,000,000 American people are living near or below the threshold of nutritive safety. This condition, if continued, will surely affect the health of the race. The income of these people must be raised or the price of food lowered."

The American Medical Association is a confederation of state medical societies, whose 175 representatives in the A. M. A. House of Delegates make rules for the entire organized U. S. medical profession. Last week the House of Delegates: P: Approved birth control obliquely, by appointing a committee to investigate the subject.

P: Condemned state medicine. P: Condemned compulsory sickness insurance.

P: Approved voluntary sickness insurance. P: Refused to re-elect Dr. Frederick Cook Warnshuis speaker of the House of Delegates, a job that he had held since 1922. Last September Dr. Warnshuis, 55, gave up his home at Grand Rapids, Mich., where he long had been secretary of the Michigan State Medical Society, to become secretary of the California Medical Association. His prime work in California was to hold the California society's medico-economic rules in line with the policies of the A. M. A. Last month the California society decided to make the best of local conditions and to cooperate with advocates of compulsory health in-surance--anathema to A. M. A. Dr. Warnshuis' successor: Dr. Nathan Bristol Van Etten of The Bronx, where proponents of socialized medicine are numerous and rambunctious.

P: Tightened their rules to inhibit "solicitation of patients, particularly in industrial practice, unfair competition of clinics and groups; unethical and unlawful practices of medicine by hospitals, dispensaries, insurance companies and universities." P: Chose Kansas City for the convention next May.

P: Elected to succeed President McLester next May, Dr. James Tate Mason, a strapping, handsome, sentimental Virginia aristocrat who, having sailed as a ship's surgeon around the Horn to Seattle, decided to settle in Washington. He first practiced medicine among miners at Franklin, Wash., found himself clever at surgery, proceeded to Seattle where in 1920 he opened the Virginia Mason Hospital. He and his associates do a flourishing business, because they are expert technically and popular socially. Dr. Mason is especially popular at Seattle business, fraternal and social meetings where, with a Southern drawl, he tells Negro stories. He used to go in for yachting, until his boat burned. Now his hobby is collecting porcelain dogs. One touchy point with him: his hair is getting thin.

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